REESE   LIBRARY 


--—n—n—n—n—n, 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


t/1  Cessions  No.  S\TJ  V^T      Class  No. 


MAN'S     KNOWLEDGE 

OK 

MAN  AND  OF  GOD 


MAN'S    KNOWLEDGE 


OF 


MAN  AND  OF  GOD 


SIX    DISCOURSES 

DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  DUBLIN 
AT  THE  DONELLAN  LECTURE,   1884-5 


BY 

RICHARD    TRAVERS    SMITH,    D.D. 

Vicar  of  S.  Bartholomew's,  and  Canon  ofS.  Patrick's,  Dublin 


MACMILLAN    AND    CO. 

AND    NEW   YORK 
1886 


J3 


RICHARD  CLAY  &  SONS, 

BREAD  STREET  HILL,  LONDON, 

Bungay,  Suffolk. 


of  THE 
UNIVERSITY 


PREFACE. 

THESE  lectures  had  been  prepared  for  the 
press  before  I  became  acquainted  with  Lotze's 
Microcosmus  ;  otherwise  they  would  have  con- 
tained many  confirmations  drawn  from  that  admir- 
able work.  But  in  the  last  lecture  I  should  have 
urged  that  the  views  of  the  nature  of  God,  upon 
which  the  Christian  Church  has  worked,  are  of  a 
less  speculative  character  than  Lotze  (bk.  viii. 
ch.  4)  seems  to  allow,  and  partake  rather  of  that 
close  connection  with  every-day  thinking  and  living 
which  this  great  writer  vindicates  for  religion  in 
general,  and  specially  for  Christianity. 

Many  will  turn  from  the  subject  of  these  pages 
as  metaphysical.  There  are  really  no  metaphysics 
properly  so  called  in  the  volume.  Ontology,  or  the 
science  of  being,  is  not  touched  ;  only  attention  is 
directed  to  our  ordinary  experience  of  the  working 
of  our  minds  in  individual  life  and  mutual  inter- 


PREFACE. 


course.  I  am  well  aware  that  reflection  even  upon 
the  commonest  matters  of  experience  assumes  an 
abstract  and  difficult  character  by  the  very  fact 
that  it  is  reflection,  and  more  so  when  literary 
skill  is  wanting.  But  whatever  be  the  measure  of 
my  own  success,  I  have  no  doubt  of  the  importance 
of  my  subject.  In  the  great  controversy  upon  belief, 
all  discussions  of  history,  science,  and  doctrine  are 
but  subsidiary  to  the  cardinal  question  whether 
the  faith  offered  us  is  such  as  we  are  forced  to 
want  and  fitted  to  receive.  Changes  of  faith,  one 
way  or  other,  which  seem  to  be  decided  by  learned 
argument,  are  really  ruled  by  men's  personal  inward 
impulse.  But  the  truest  test  to  decide  whether 
a  faith  is  adapted  to  our  necessary  wants  is 
furnished  by  the  inquiry  whether  it  falls  in  with 
those  beliefs  which  are  obviously  and  necessarily 
required  in  daily  life.  That  faith  will  stand  which 
best  answers  this  test  when  morally  and  thought- 
fully applied,  with  those  aids  from  within  and 
without  which  life  teaches  us  to  use  for  dis- 
tinguishing transitory  opinions  and  inclinations 
from  real  necessities  of  the  mind  and  soul. 


/ 

ft  UNIV 


UNIVERSITY  ) 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTION    ,  i 


II. 

SELF-KNOWLEDGE    ...................        51 

III. 

KNOWLEDGE   OF   MEN      .................        92 

» 

IV. 

WE   KNOW    GOD   THROUGH    SELF-KNOWLEDGE       ......      II 


V. 

WE   KNOW  GOD   IN    NATURE  AND   MAN       .........      173 

VI. 

GOD    REVEALED     .  2l6 


?„ 

CNTvr  .      -TT^ 

£•< 


MAN'S     KNOWLEDGE 


OF 


MAN  AND  OF  GOD. 


INTRODUCTION. 

"  The  invisible  things  of  God  are  clearly  seen,  being  understood 
by  the  things  that  are  made."  —  ROM.  i.  20. 

"Who  knoweth  the  spirit  of  man  that  goeth  upward,  and  the 
spirit  of  the  beast  that  goeth  downward  to  the  earth?"  —  ECCL.  iii.  21. 

i.  WE  are   about    to    maintain    that   we   know 

God  in  the  same  way  as  we  know  man.      It   is 

an  argument  from  analogy,  and  seeks 

Power  of  the  i  »•     •  i  r 

argument  which    to   recommend   religion  by  reason  of 

depends  upon 


the  analogy       its  agreement  with  the  experience  'of 

tween  religic 
and  natural 
knowledge. 


between  religion  .          . 

and  natural       life.     This  kind  of  argument  has  been 


a  weapon  in  the  hands  of  Christians 
since  long  before  the  time  of  Butler,  and  its 
value  is  greater  now  than  ever  before.  For 
natural  knowledge  has  become  so  extensive  and 

B 


MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


so  valuable  that  religion  has,  with  most  of 
us,  little  chance  of  acceptance  unless  it  comes 
recommended  by  it.  The  progress  of  natural 
knowledge  has  resembled  that  of  certain  empires, 
which  after  having  for  a  long  time  existed  by  the 
forbearance  of  more  powerful  states,  have  come 
to  be  the  arbiters  of  the  political  world,  and  decide 
whether  those  very  kingdoms  shall  be  allowed 
to  live,  and  what  their  boundaries  shall  be.  Ac- 
cordingly the  most  popular  book  which  for  many 
years  has  appeared  upon  the  religious  question  has 
been  one  which  claims  to  show  that  natural  law 
rules  in  the  spiritual  world  ;  and  that  between 
religion  and  nature  there  exists  not  merely  analogy 
but  continuity,  the  one  being  the  further  applica- 
tion of  the  powers  and  principles  which  prevail  in 
the  other. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  see  why  this  argument  pos- 
sesses so  much  force.  On  the  one  hand,  if  we  are 
permitted  to  assume  the  being  of  a  God  we  have 
then  in  the  facts  of  our  earthly  life  specimens  of 
His  action  and  indications  of  the  laws  which 
prevail  in  His  government,  and  good  reason  is 
thereby  given  for  holding  that  He  will  make 
further  applications  of  the  same  principles.  But  it 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD. 


must  not  be  supposed  that  reasoning  from  analogy 
loses  all  its  force  if  the  being  of  God  is  regarded  as 
something  to  be  proved,  not  assumed,  or  even  as 
something  not  true.     In  that  case  the  conditions 
and  surroundings  of  our  earthly  lives,  and  the  cor- 
responding bent  and  habits  of  the  human  mind, 
remain  as  facts   however  they  have  come  about. 
And  if  it  can  be  shown  that  they  are  such  as  point 
to  religion,  then  a  religion  must  be  provided,  unless 
man  is  to  be  left  without  the  supply  of  an  essential 
want.     Under  these  circumstances  some  men  will 
draw  from  the  existence  of  wants  for  which  there 
is  no  earthly  provision,  the  conclusion  that  human 
life  is  full  of  miserable  illusion  ;  some  will  attempt 
the  creation  of  a  religion  without  a  God  ;   while 
some   will   hold  that   such   an    education  of  man 
suffices  to  prove  the  existence  of  a  God  to  carry 
it   on.      But  all   will   acknowledge  the  power   of 
the  argument. 

A  great  part  of  the  force  which  the  argument 
from  analogy  possesses  is  due  to  the  fact  that  when 
well  handled  it  is  more  than  a  mere  argument ; 
that  is,  it  is  not  a  mere  piece  of  reasoning  ad- 
dressed to  our  intellects,  but  receives  constant  aid 
from  our  sympathetic  interest  in  the  views  which 

B  2, 


MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


it  gives  of  human  life.      Our  affections  and  our 
moral  nature  are  enlisted  as  the  laws  which  rule 
them  in  daily  life  are  vividly  set  before  us ;  and 
the  interest  is  carried  forward  into  that  larger  sphere 
which  religion  offers  them.     A  better  instance  of 
this  cannot  be  found  than  certain  of  our  Saviour's 
parables.     In  many  of  these  the  Lord    not  only 
uses  earthly  things  as  illustrations  of  heavenly,  but 
founds  an  argument  upon  the  analogy  between  the 
two.      As  for  instance,   "  How  much   more  shall 
your  Father  which  is  in  heaven  give  good  things 
to  them  that  ask  Him  : "  and  "  How  much  more 
shall  your  heavenly  Father  do  also  unto  you  if  ye 
from  your  hearts  forgive  not  every  one  his  brother 
their  trespasses  ! "    We  have  here  a  piece  of  reason- 
ing of  great  power  depending  upon  the  analogy 
between  the  principles  which  rule  human  nature 
and  those  which  must  govern  Him  who  has  framed 
human  nature  so.     Yet  the  reasoning  is  not  ad- 
dressed  to   the   bare    intellect,    but    also    to    our 
human     affections     and     our     human     sense     of 
justice,  which   come  to  the   aid  of  the  argument 
as  we  recognise  the  picture  of  fatherly  love  and 
the  just  demand  for  punishment  upon  the  cruel 
and  unforgiving. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD. 


The  "how  much  more  "  of  our  Lord's  argument 
suggests  another  practical  power  which  reasoning 
from  analogy  possesses.  It  may  sometimes  assume 
with  great  force  and  justice  the  form  of  an  argu- 
ment a  fortiori.  It  may  appeal  not  merely  to 
what  we  know  of  the  laws  which  prevail  in  this 
life  as  affording  reason  for  supposing  that  they 
prevail  beyond  this  life.  But  it  may  point  to  the 
defects  in  their  working  here  as  giving  hope  of  a 
better  and  more  complete  operation  hereafter.  If 
it  can  do  this  with  truth  it  may  depend  upon  a 
vast  amount  of  help  from  man's  emotional  nature, 
which  struggles  against  the  troubles  and  imperfec- 
tions of  his  earthly  conditions  almost  as  much  as 
it  apprehends  their  happiness,  and  is  still  more 
easily  roused  to  hope  for  what  he  misses  here  than 
to  fear  the  loss  of  what  he  has.  To  be  sure  this 
use  of  the  analogy  between  things  human  and 
divine  is  liable  to  just  suspicion.  It  may  easily 
lose  its  grasp  upon  analogy  altogether  and  wander 
off  into  hopes  and  beliefs  which  are  recommended 
not  by  their  agreement  with  experienced  facts  but 
by  their  contrast  with  them.  Yet  very  truthful 
and  thoughtful  people  have  often  felt  justified  in 
believing  that  in  the  further  applications  of  natural 


MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


law,  for  which  the  spiritual  and  the  future  world 
give  room,  explanations  may  be  found  of  many 
difficulties  and  defects  which  oppress  us  as  we 
observe  their  present  operation.  So  that  one  who 
accepts  nature  and  not  religion  may  be  like  a 
man  who  invests  his  means  in  securities  which 
bring  him  much  immediate  loss,  and  sells  out  just 
at  the  point  where  without  further  expenditure  he 
would  have  largely  gained  by  leaving  his  money 
where  it  was. 

2.  We  have  just  said  that  feeling  and  conscience 

are  proper  helps  to  the  intellect  in  apprehending 

religious  truth.     But  when  we  compare 

Now  natural 

knowledge  comes    religious  truths  with  earthly,  the  con- 
not  merely 

through  the       viction  is  forced  upon  us  that  feeling 

intellect,  but 

through  the       and   conscience   are   more  than  mere 

feelings. 

helps  to  logic  in  finding  truth.  They 
are  themselves  organs  for  the  discovery  of  truth. 
So  far  from  needing  to  be  chary  as  to  the  formal 
logic  of  our  argument,  we  see  that  the  more 
formal  it  is  the  less  it  is  like  life.  "II  est," 
says  Joubert,  "de  tres  graves  matieres  et  des 
questions  fort  importantes  ou  les  idees  decisives 
doivent  venir  des  sentiments :  si  elles  viennent 
d'ailleurs  tout  se  perdra.  Penser  ce  que  Ton  ne 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD. 


sent  pas,  c'est  mentir  a  soi-meme.  Tout  ce  qu'on 
pense  it  faut  le  penser  avec  son  etre  tout  entier, 
ame  et  corps." x  This  must  be  taken  careful 
account  of  if  analogy  is  to  be  used  aright. 
Let  us  notice  in  a  little  detail  how  the  matter 
stands. 

In  life  we  are  all  agreed  that  the  understanding 
must  not  be  left  at  the  mercy  of  the  feelings 
or  even  of  the  moral  impulses,  which  if  allowed 
to  work  unchecked  become  a  kind  of  higher 
sensuality.  There  ought  to  be  harmony  and 
union  between  conviction  and  emotion.  The  in- 
ward man  should  advance  like  a  disciplined 
army :  the  solid  mass  of  intellectual  belief  sup- 
ported by  the  lighter  squadrons  of  feeling,  which 
in  their  turn  depend  on  it  and  cannot  be  safely 
thrown  forward  by  themselves.  But  this  does 
not  impose  on  us  in  the  affairs  of  life  a  fixed 
sequence  by  which  logical  convictions  must  be 
first  acquired,  and  the  feelings  duly  admitted 
when  their  time  comes,  moderated  in  their 
behaviour  by  the  strict  demands  of  logical 
demonstration. 

On    the  contrary,  we  find    by   experience   that 

1  Joubert,  Pense'es,  vol.  ii.  pp.  123,  124. 


MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


the  first  response  which  our  organism  makes  to 
the  presence  of  facts,  either  true  or  imagined  to 
be  true,  is  made  in  the  form  of  feeling,  not  of 
knowledge.  The  presence  of  external  facts  in 
the  time  of  childhood  causes  feeling  and  action 
in  us  long  before  we  can  be  said  to  know  ; 
unless  knowledge  be  taken  in  a  sense  which 
has  in  it  more  of  instinct  or  impulse  than  of 
intellectual  conviction. 

3.  Moreover,  when  in  after  years  we  interrogate 

ourselves   as   to   the   precise   nature   of  the   facts 

which    roused    our    feeling    in    those 

And  the  intellect 

times   of  instinct,  we  often   find  our- 


selves  perplexed   in  answering.     And 

of  the  feelings.       eyen    ^    ^    maturity     Qf    Qur     poWerS, 

though  we  acknowledge  the  anomaly  of  feeling 
without  knowledge  to  justify  it,  yet  complete 
inability  to  resist  feeling  and  even  an  absolute 
conviction  that  it  is  right  feeling  may  be  accom- 
panied by  the  greatest  difficulty  in  representing 
to  the  mind  the  facts  on  which  it  is  founded. 
And  when,  with  the  utmost  exertion  of  thought, 
we  attempt  to  put  the  reasons  of  our  feeling 
into  form,  either  for  our  own  satisfaction  or  for 
that  of  others,  we  generally  find  that  our  justi- 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD. 


fication  loses  nearly  all  its  force  in  the  process 
of  stating  it.  We  find  that  there  is  room  for 
varying  judgments  upon  it,  and  that  there  is 
something  in  it  which  cannot  be  presented  for 
judgment  at  all.  It  must  be  allowed  that  in  our 
natural  life  feeling  has  always  its  part  with 
thought  in  guiding  us  to  truth,  and  that  if  the 
guidance  of  feeling  be  imperfect  that  of  thought 
is  the  same. 

Nay,  it  might  be  plausibly  maintained  that 
feeling  goes  generally  right  except  where  thought 
leads  it  astray.  Feeling  stands  in  more  direct 
relation  to  our  surroundings  than  thought.  And 
it  is  only  by  taking  account  of  the  informa- 
tion which  feelings  convey  that  thought  can  give 
its  verdicts.  For  instance,  bodily  feelings  alone 
convey  to  us  the  presence  of  material  objects 
external  to  us.  Understanding  receives  and 
combines  their  messages  in  wonderful  ways.  But 
when  bodily  sensations  cease  to  be  actually 
present,  as  when  we  have  seen  something 
for  a  moment,  or  pushed  against  something 
in  the  dark,  and  understanding  is  left  by  a 
process  of  sheer  reflection  to  tell  what  the  true 
message  and  meaning  of  the  sensation  was,  we 


i  o  MAN'S  KNO  W LEDGE 

constantly  find  it  at  fault.  It  cannot  recall  the 
sensation  with  sufficient  distinctness,  and  often 
persuades  itself  that  something  was  seen  or  felt 
which  was  not,  or  that  something  really  felt  was 
only  imagined.  And  even  when  the  sensation  is 
not  of  such  a  passing  nature,  still,  if  the  mind 
takes  up  a  wrong  impression  with  persistence,  or 
even  assumes  persistently  an  attitude  of  reflection 
and  of  questioning,  it  will  be  often  able  to  pervert 
the  true  meaning  of  a  sensation  even  in  its  very 
presence.  Many  a  white  stone  has  been  taken  for 
a  ghost  by  persons  predisposed  that  way ;  and 
many  a  preoccupied  man  gazes  upon  his  dinner 
or  upon  his  book  without  thinking  of  putting  them 
to  their  proper  use.  For  reflection  is  so  different 
an  attitude  from  sensation,  that  it  is  capable  of 
shutting  our  senses  against  the  messages  of  the 
external  world,  or  our  minds  against  the  messages 
of  the  senses.  Thus  savages,  whose  minds  have 
not  assumed  so  persistent  an  attitude  of  reflection 
as  those  of  civilised  men,  are  known  to  be  truer 
observers  of  external  things. 

To  be  sure,  if  the  word  truth  be  so  defined  as 
to  designate  intellectual  convictions  alone,  it  goes 
without  saying  that  the  intellect  is  the  only 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  1 1 

guide  to  truth.  But  truth  may  more  usefully  be 
taken  to  mean  external  reality  than  to  denote  any 
theories  of  our  minds.  And  in  this  better  sense  of 
the  word  truth  our  possession  of  it  consists  in  a 
certain  harmony  of  relation  not  only  of  our  intel- 
lect but  of  our  whole  nature  towards  the  reality 
amid  which  we  live.  Truth  possessed  by  the 
intellect  alone  may  be  a  useless  and  dormant 
piece  of  property  even  if  it  can  be  said  to  be 
possessed  at  all.  But  a  fruitful  possession  of 
truth  is  a  more  complex  matter.  It  consists 
first  in  feeling  true  impressions  and  then  in  re- 
producing these  for  the  mind  in  their  true  form 
and  force,  and  then  in  deducing  from  this  record 
a  conviction  which  shall  provide  for  the  continu- 
ance and  for  the  due  growth  of  the  feelings  as 
circumstances  demand. 

4.  For  an  entire  inability  to  support  feeling  by 
a  definite  belief,  or  even  a  neglect  to  make  the 
attempt,  though  an  imperfect  one,  may  But  the  feelings 
be  followed  by  disastrous  results  to  ~ 
feeling  itself.  Some  one  by  assailing 
our  inadequate  thoughts  may  miser- 
ably disturb,  or  even  destroy,  many  good  and 
true  feelings  which  were  connected  with  them, 


1 2  MAN'S  KNO  W LEDGE 

just  as  a  member  of  some  commercial  house 
who  has  done  his  own  share  of  business  in 
an  admirable  manner,  finds  himself  ruined  by 
his  connection  with  an  incapable  or  indolent 
partner. 

A  familiar  instance  of  this  in  common  life  is 
found  in  our  knowledge  of  the  character  of  the 
people  with  whom  we  live.  The  truest  discernment 
of  character  is  made  by  instinctive  feeling ;  or  if 
it  be  an  intellectual  process  it  is  one  which  is 
not  conscious  of  itself.  It  grows  through  at- 
tractions and  repulsions  as  natural  as  our  desire 
or  dislike  of  this  or  that  food.  The  reason  why, 
we  cannot  tell.  And  some  steady  natures  to 
their  great  benefit  frame  these  impressions  into 
a  mental  conviction  very  difficult  to  shake.  But 
there  are  others  whom  a  novel  theory  regarding 
a  friend's  character  may  surprise  into  doubt  if 
not  into  acquiescence.  Their  feelings,  although 
they  may  have  been  true  to  real  facts  of  the 
case,  have  never  been  sufficiently  formulated  into 
conviction.  And  when  the  new  theory  presents 
itself  to  the  intellect  it  finds  the  ground  un- 
occupied. The  new  theory  has  perhaps  some 
appearances  in  its  favour.  It  accounts  for  some 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  13 

of  the  facts  of  the  case.  Other  supports  are 
quickly  added  or  imagined.  A  new  set  of  feel- 
ings, the  more  violent  because  they  are  new, 
spring  up  to  enforce  the  new  belief.  And  the 
old  impressions  are  for  the  time  absent  and  for- 
gotten. Such  was  the  history  of  Othello's  change 
of  mind  to  Desdemona. 

I  meet  a  certain  person  for  the  first  time. 
When  we  have  parted  I  ask  myself  what  is  my 
judgment  of  his  character.  To  make  myself 
capable  of  answering  the  question  I  have  to 
take  care  that  my  feelings  and  instincts  have 
been  in  a  candid  condition  and  able  to  take  an 
impression  faithfully.  And  to  answer  it  with 
any  effect  I  have  to  recall  my  feelings  during 
the  interview  as  they  really  were;  a  difficult 
matter  to  do  with  truth.  I  have  to  compel  my 
mind  to  make  a  proper  deduction  from  the  im- 
pressions without  regard  to  the  prejudices  about 
human  character  in  general,  or  this  one  in  par- 
ticular, of  which  it  is  sure  to  be  full  ;  and  I 
must  be  on  my  guard  against  the  common 
temptation  of  laying  down  a  more  exact  theory 
than  the  facts  warrant.  To  give  a  just  judg- 
ment upon  first  impressions  of  character  requires 


1  4  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

a  peculiar  quickness  both  of  feeling  and  intellect 
and  a  peculiar  balance  between  the  two.  Should 
the  acquaintance  continue  and  opportunity  be 
given  for  a  more  deliberate  judgment  these  con- 
ditions will  still  remain  the  same.  It  will  still 
be  necessary  that  the  feelings  should  be  healthy 
and  active  in  taking  in  the  meaning  of  every 
new  fact  we  learn  or  observe  :  and  that  the  un- 
derstanding should  not  merely  keep  the  feelings 
in  check  but  give  them  a  respectful  attention. 
Seeing  how  ill-balanced  the  minds  of  men  are 
in  themselves  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  conclu- 
sions to  which  they  come  about  one  another's 
characters  are  so  very  various. 

5.  To  maintain  that  reality  is  found  by  powers 
other  than  the  understanding  is  far  from  implying 
science  does  not  ^Y  depreciation  of  science  or  of  the 


teach  us  to       truths  which  it  teaches.     On  the  con- 

regard  the 


intellect  as  our      tmry    nQ  Qne  ^Q    takes    the    V1CW 

only  guide  to  J  ' 

recognised  by  science  of  man's  place  in 
nature  can  be  surprised  to  find  feeling  and  reason 
mixing  in  mutual  helpfulness  or  mutual  antagonism 
in  his  guidance  to  truth.  Man,  like  every  other 
organism,  is  engaged  in  adjusting  himself  to  his 
environment.  In  the  lower  creatures,  to  whose 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  15 

nature  that  of  man  stands  parallel,  and  even 
related,  the  adjustments  between  organism  and 
environment  are  made  through  unconscious  feeling 
without  any  reasoning.  It  is  thus  that  even  the 
plants  seek  and  receive  their  sustenance  and  the 
wild  beast  finds  its  food  and  avoids  its  foes. 
Every  feeling  and  instinct  in  the  lower  creatures 
is  a  kind  of  unconscious  reply  to  the  unconscious 
question  "  What  is  it  that  surrounds  me  ? "  To 
help  him  in  answering  this  question  man  has 
understanding.  But  his  understanding  grows  by 
gradual  stages  out  of  the  instincts  and  feelings 
of  the  lower  forms  of  creation.  And  while  he 
has  acquired  this  new  help  to  adjustment,  he 
has  not  left  behind  the  lower  helps  of  feeling 
and  instinct.  These  remain  beside  his  under- 
standing as  correspondences  between  his  nature 
and  his  surroundings.  What  just  claim  then 
can  the  understanding  make  to  be  his  sole 
guide  to  truth ;  his  sole  help  in  answering  the 
question,  What  is  it  that  surrounds  me  ?  And 
at  what  stage  in  his  development  could  the 
understanding  be  supposed  to  have  acquired 
such  a  right?  Aristotle  says  that  it  is  probable 
many  improbable  things  will  happen,  and  in  like 


* 


1  6  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

manner  we  may  say  that  it  is  scientific  to  believe 
that  a  great  deal  of  knowledge  does  not  come 
by  science.  But  this  is  often  forgotten.  The 
intellect  sets  out  upon  the  task  of  registering 
experience  and  calls  this  science.  But  engrossed 
by  its  own  methods  it  comes  to  deny  reality  to 
any  experiences  except  its  own,  and  to  dictate  to 
faculties  which  ought  to  have  as  real  a  share 
as  it  has  in  adjusting  our  relations  to  our  sur- 
roundings. 

6.  If  we    are   to   expect   that   the    reasons   for 

religious   belief    will    be   the   same    as   those   for 

.   ,.,.  .         natural    belief    we    must    look    for   a 

And  this  is  as 

similar  mixture  of  feelin     and  under- 


standing  in  the  attainment  of  religious 
truth.  It  is  not  so  much  conceded  as  imperatively 
demanded  by  our  men  of  science,  that  the  criteria 
of  truth  in  religion  shall  be  the  same  as  those 
which  we  find  applicable  in  natural  life.  The 
demand  is  perfectly  just  :  therefore  we  must  take 
care  that  we  do  not  narrow  our  principle  of  analogy 
by  regarding  only  that  species  of  natural  truth 
which  may  be  described  as  scientific.  There  is  an 
immense  department  of  natural  truth  which  does 
not  come  under  this  head  :  namely,  all  the 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  17 

intercourse  of  living  beings  with  living  beings. 
This  intercourse  may  indeed  be  made  the  subject 
of  scientific  observations  which  may  be  registered 
for  scientific  knowledge.  But  the  knowledge  which 
is  necessary  for  practical  use  in  the  intercourse 
itself  is  a  different  thing,  and  the  two  should  by 
no  means  be  confounded. 

Now  this  practical  natural  knowledge  which 
living  beings  acquire  and  use  in  their  intercourse 
with  each  other  is  shown  by  any  just  observation 
to  come  through  feelings,  instincts,  sentiments,  or 
powers  to  which  no  name  can  be  given  at  all. 
Why  should  it  be  different  with  religious  know- 
ledge ?  There  is  every  reason  why  it  should  be  the 
same  with  religion  if  religion  is  the  intercourse 
of  living  beings  on  earth  with  living  beings 
or  a  living  being  above  nature.  The  constitu- 
tion of  man  requires  that  this  intercourse  with 
a  supernatural  being  shall  take  place,  like  that 
with  natural  beings,  through  impressions  on  the 
mind  which  indicate  an  external  presence  :  such 
impressions  as,  in  a  general  way,  we  call  feelings. 
And  as  in  intercourse  with  men,  so  also  in  that 
with  God,  there  will  be  a  difficulty  on  the  part 
of  the  mind  in  observing  or  in  recalling  the  true 

c 


1 8  MAN'S  KNO  W LEDGE 

nature  of  the  feelings  and  in  stating  rightly  the 
true  deduction  from  them.  The  feeling  is  one 
thing,  the  remembrance  of  it  as  reproduced  and 
reflected  on  by  the  understanding  is  another. 
True  impressions  may  be  forgotten  or  falsified 
to  the  memory  or  even  in  their  very  presence, 
and  a  determined  attitude  of  the  mind  may 
hinder  the  access  of  other  similar  impressions,  or 
deny  them  if  they  come.1 

The  religious  beliefs  of  men  may  be  said  to 
embody  their  judgment  upon  the  character  of 
the  universe.  And  if  the  difficulties  in  main- 
taining the  healthy  action  of  feeling  and  under- 
standing, each  in  its  sphere,  and  the  due  balance 
of  their  relation  to  one  another  bring  about  the 
greatest  variations  both  from  the  reality  and  from 

1  "How  does  it  come  to  pass  that  in  this  branch  of  knowledge  there 
are  so  many  and  so  contrary  systems  ?  This  strange  phenomenon 
may  I  think  be  accounted  for  if  we  distinguish  between  conscious- 
ness and  reflection,  which  are  often  improperly  confounded.  The 
first  is  common  to  all  men  at  all  times,  but  is  insufficient  of  itself 
to  give  us  clear  and  distinct  notions  of  the  operations  of  which  we 
are  conscious,  and  of  their  mutual  relations  and  minute  distinctions. 
The  second — to  wit,  attentive  reflection  upon  these  operations, 
making  them  objects  of  thought,  surveying  them  attentively  on  all 
sides — is  so  far  from  being  common  to  all  men  that  it  is  the  lot  of 
very  few.  The  habit  of  .this  reflection,  even  in  those  whom  nature 
has  fitted  for  it,  is  not  to  be  obtained  without  much  pains  and 
practice." — Reid's  Works,  by  Hamilton,  p.  433. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  19 

one  another  in  men's  judgments  of  human  char- 
acter, we  may  expect  the  same  in  their  judg- 
ment of  the  character  of  the  universe,  that  is 
to  say  in  their  religious  belief.  And  the  happy 
or  disastrous  results  to  their  own  character  and 
happiness  which  flow  from  their  judgments  in 
religion  meet  no  unfit  parallel  in  the  effects 
which  result  from  truth  or  error  in  their  appre- 
ciation of  the  people  with  whom  they  are  brought 
in  contact  during  life. 

Let  us  observe  how  religion  works  in  a  man's 
life.  Like  every  other  subject  on  which  the  mind 
of  man  employs  itself,  religion  implies  feelings 
experienced  by  which  a  reality  is  recognised,  and 
ideas  in  the  mind  resting  on  these  experiences 
and  in  turn  lending  support  to  them.  The  idea 
common  under  different  forms  to  every  religion  is 
that  of  a  supernatural  reality  in  contact  with  the 
soul.  This  supernatural  reality  has  been  almost 
universally  held  to  be  personal,  by  reason  of  the 
very  nature  of  its  contact  with  the  personal  soul. 
But  even  were  it  only  the  Eternal  Not  Ourselves,  it 
must  make  its  footing  in  man's  nature  good  by 
means  of  felt  experiences  and  the  mental  ideas  in 
which  past  experiences  are  registered  and  future 

C  2 


20  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

ones  are  sought  for.     Now  it  might  be  thought  in- 
consistent with  the  immediate  connection  with  the 
soul   which   religion,    if   true,  must    possess,   that 
the   intervention   of   other   human    beings  should 
have  much  to  do  with  suggesting  both  religious 
ideas  and  religious   feelings  ;  so   much,  that  little 
of  either  would  be  developed  if  the  training   of 
the  unformed  mind  were  not  taken  possession  of 
by  teachers  in  a  more  or  less  deliberate  way.     Be 
it  surprising  or  not,  such  is  the  fact.     It  is  the  fact 
not  merely  in  religion,  but  in  every  other  depart- 
ment of   ouf  experience.       And   our   dependence 
upon    other    men    is    perhaps    less    surprising    in 
religion  than  anywhere  else,  because   religion,  as 
its  name  implies,  is  an  influence  common  to  all, 
which  binds  men  together  and  must  be  supposed 
to  be  intended  by  the  spiritual  power  from  which 
it  proceeds  to  have  this  effect. 

Teachers  of  religion  are  brought  in  their  very 
earliest  attempts  face  to  face  with  the  difficulty  of 
securing  a  due  balance  of  intellectual  conception 
and  spiritual  feeling  in  those  committed  to  their 
training.  It  is  easy  to  rouse  the  religious  emotions 
of  children  with  great  vehemence,  while  supply- 
ing them  with  mental  conceptions  so  indefinite 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  21 

that  they  vanish  as  the  mind  becomes  strong 
enough  to  demand  its  rights,  or  so  ill-supported  by 
proof  that  the  first  breath  of  doubt  will  overthrow 
them.  It  is  easy,  on  the  other  hand,  to  make 
religion  an  affair  of  catechisms  and  Bible  lessons 
learnt  by  rote  ;  in  which  case  it  will  have  no 
support  from  the  feelings,  and  it  may  really  be  a 
matter  of  no  great  moral  importance  whether  a 
belief  so  purely  theoretical  is  formally  retained  in 
after  life  or  not. 

What  teacher  is  sufficient  for  these  things  ?  It 
is  impossible  by  any  amount  of  reflection  to  lay 
down  rules  for  the  training  of  the  feelings  and  the 
understanding  of  children  in  due  and  equal  mea- 
sure. In  devising  such  rules  and  trying  to  observe 
them,  we  should  probably  lose  all  the  life  and 
sympathy  with  our  pupils  which  give  power  either 
over  their  hearts  or  minds.  So  that  there  seems 
to  be  no  complete  help  for  the  present  state  of 
things,  which  commits  the  child's  mind  in  matters 
of  religion  (as  well  as  in  all  other  matters)  to  a 
miscellaneous  variety  of  influences,  exercised  by 
nurses,  playfellows  and  chance  companions,  and 
that  often  in  a  more  effective  manner  than  parents 
and  catechists  can  attain.  This  confused  mass  of 


22  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

motive  and  suggestion  to  feeling  and  to  mind  is 
the  inheritance  of  an  immense  series  of  similar 
educations  exercised  upon  the  successive  genera- 
tions of  humanity.  "  Whatever,"  to  borrow 
Milton's  expression,  "time  in  his  huge  drag-net 
has  brought  down,"  this  it  is  which  composes  the 
conglomerate  of  powers  that  influence  every  mind. 
And,  as  might  be  expected  under  such  a  state  of 
things,  the  feelings  are  constantly  led  wrong  and 
the  understanding  as  constantly.  The  feelings 
cease  not  to  misguide  the  understanding  and 
encroach  upon  its  province,  and  the  understanding 
upon  its  part  is  equally  active  in  mistake. 

Thus  we  find  man  at  his  best  estate  provided 
for  the  affairs  of  life  and  of  religion.  The  man 
whose  feelings  are  healthily  trained  and  given  full 
play  is  perhaps  best  off ;  yet  he  never  fails,  both 
in  life  and  in  religion,  to  take  up  notions  and  to 
adopt  practices  which  his  neighbour's  cold  under- 
standing can  prove  unreasonable.  But  your  able 
man,  who  requires  a  proof  for  everything  and  takes 
nothing  for  granted  upon  the  bidding  of  his  heart, 
misses  some  of  the  very  best  things  in  life,  and  if 
religion  is  to  be  like  life  it  would  be  very  surprising 
that  the  able  man  should  be  the  one  to  be  always 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  23 

right  in  that  sphere.  Contemplating  the  relations 
so  constantly  and,  as  it  might  appear,  necessarily 
inharmonious,  of  the  active  powers  and  the 
understanding,  some  have  been  led  to  pessimism  : 
that  is  to  say,  to  the  belief  of  a  source  of 
inevitable  mistake  and  unhappiness  in  the  consti- 
tution of  life,  flowing  more  and  more  freely  as  the 
higher  developments  of  life  are  reached.  And  in 
truth  there  would  be  little  possibility  of  avoiding 
such  a  conclusion  if  we  did  not  believe  in  the 
possibility  of  attaining  a  better  balance  of  in- 
tellect and  feeling,  and  in  a  steady  progress  of 
mental  evolution  towards  good  ends:  a  general 
progress  which  will  not  be  prevented  by  the 
doubts  or  difficulties  of  this  person  or  of  that. 
It  is  impossible  to  believe  in  such  a  progress  with- 
out believing  in  a  Power  which  directs  it,  and  that 
belief  is  in  itself  religion.  Moreover,  the  progress 
itself  has  included  faith  in  the  supernatural. 

7.    Securus  judicat    orb  is    terrarum.      This     is 
a    phrase   which    ought     by    right   to    . 

o  /          &  Evolution  must 

have    a    far     more     true    and    literal 
meaning  for  believers  in  evolution  of 
every    degree    than    it    had    for    the  the  human  race' 
thinker  who  first   propounded  it.      St.  Augustine 


24  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

had  in  his  mind  the  general  agreement  of  the 
Christian  world  in  opposition  to  private  or 
sectarian  opinions.  But  the  orbis  terrarum  which 
the  evolutionist  deals  with  is  not  only  the  whole 
human  race  but  the  whole  universe  whose  pro- 
gress from  time  immemorial  finds  its  crowning 
result  in  the  present  condition  of  the  mind  of 
man.  Nevertheless,  there  are  no  sort  of  people 
who  are  more  confident  than  evolutionists  that  a 
trim  argument  is  capable  of  wiping  out  from 
the  nature  of  a  man  or  of  a  race  the  religious 
thoughts  and  feelings  which  have  been  confirmed 
by  the  experience  of  ages.  And  this,  though  the 
very  faculties  of  reason  by  which  this  destructive 
feat  is  performed  have  to  the  evolutionist  no  other 
sanction  or  foundation  than  that  actual  existence 
in  the  present  development  of  man,  of  which  in  the 
case  of  religion  he  makes  so  little  account.  This 
point  has  been  ably  pressed  from  the  negative  side 
by  Mr.  Arthur  Balfour  :— 

"  Ever  since  there  has  been  speculation  in  the 
varieties  of  religious  opinion  this  fact  must  have 
been  obvious,  that  a  man's  beliefs  are  very  much 
the  results  of  antecedents  and  surroundings  with 
which  they  have  no  logical  connection.  ...  In 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  25 

other  words,  it  must  have  been  always  known 
that  there  were  causes  of  belief  which  were  not 
reasons.  .  .  .  But  though  in  the  face  of  such 
evidence  nobody  doubts  the  fact,  few  people,  I 
should  think,  contemplate  it  habitually  without 
suffering  under  a  sort  of  sceptical  uneasiness  when 
they  consider  its  bearings  on  their  own  opinions. 
.  .  .  The  existence  of  Comtism  is  explained  by  it 
no  less  than  that  of  fetichism  ;  it  accounts  for 
theories  of  evolution  not  less  than  for  Hindoo 
cosmogonies,  and  the  man  of  science  is  as  certainly 
under  its  control  as  was  the  Indian  whose  super- 
stitions he  is  making  the  subject  of  analysis  and 
classification."  1 

But  to  be  sure  there  is  a  positive  side  to  the 
same  principle.  We  are  what  we  are.  We  cannot 
help  using  the  faculties  and  working  upon  the 
principles  which  have  been  developed  in  us, 
according  to  the  laws  laid  down  for  us  by  the  facts 
of  our  state.  If  we  do  this  truly  we  know  that 
future  development  through  it  may  indefinitely 
enlarge  the  faculties  and  surround  them  with 
different  facts,  yet  never  will  prove  it  otherwise 
than  right  that,  being  what  we  are  and  where  we 

1  Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt,  pp.  360-2. 


26  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

are,  we  should  think  according  to  our  condition. 
The  question  is,  what  are  our  faculties  and  what 
is  our  condition  ?  And  this  is  not  a  question 
which  a  man  can  decide  for  himself  off-hand  by 
giving  unrestrained  scope  to  the  faculty,  be  it 
sentiment  or  understanding,  which  pushes  forward 
most  vehemently  in  his  existing  state  of  mind. 
Many,  perhaps  most,  men  discover,  even  in  the  after 
portion  of  their  own  lives,  how  they  may  miscon- 
ceive themselves.  They  must  call  the  experiences 
and  powers  of  their  race  to  supplement  their  own. 
Even  these  must  be  tested  so  far  as  a  man  can  do 
it.  For  that  may  pretend  to  be  history  which  is 
not  real  history,  and  those  may  pretend  to  be 
assured  and  developed  powers  of  man  which  are 
only  exercises  of  his  imagination.  It  is  here  that 
analogy  is  of  great  use. 

The  question  whether  we  are  called  upon  to  do 
any  act,  either  mental  or  physical,  is  ruled  by  the 
question  whether  we  have  the  power  to  do  it, 
including  in  the  word  power  both  the  faculty  in 
us  and  the  state  of  outward  circumstances  which 
affords  the  faculty  opportunity  to  work.  If  we  have 
the  power,  then  its  very  possession  is  generally 
sufficient  reason  why  we  should  attempt  to  use 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  27 

it;  and  inducements  of  various  kinds  maybe  added 
to  an  indefinite  extent  by  the  example  or  influence 
of  other  men  and  by  the  good  which  the  act  may 
promise  to  ourselves.  But  if  we  have  not  the 
power  no  amount  of  inducement  should  prevail  to 
make  us  waste  our  energies  on  an  impossible  task. 
When  we  are  considering  such  a  matter  the  most 
effective  resolution  of  the  question  whether  we 
have  the  power  will  be  found  in  an  instance  where 
we  ourselves,  or  somebody  else  whose  faculties  are 
like  our  own,  have  performed  a  task  which  offered 
similar  difficulties.  Suppose  that  we  felt  a  call 
to  learn  a  foreign  language,  either  from  a  desire 
to  exercise  our  linguistic  faculty,  or  to  obtain 
knowledge  of  the  thoughts  of  some  who  have 
spoken  or  written  in  that  language  alone.  If  there 
be  absolutely  no  means  whatever  of  learning  the 
language  we  must  give  up  the  attempt,  however 
much  it  costs  us  to  do  so.  But  if  it  can  be 
shown  us  that  other  people,  or  we  ourselves,  have 
learnt  another  language  which  presented  the  same 
difficulties  our  course  will  be  clear,  and  nothing 
will  prevent  an  immediate  attempt  to  master  this 
foreign  tongue  except  our  failure  to  apprehend 
the  good  which  we  can  derive  from  knowing 


28  MA  N'S  KNO  W LEDGE 

it ;  a  failure  of  which  aversion  to  labour  and  the 
desire  to  spend  our  time  more  pleasantly  will  be 
the  most  probable  account.  Religion  is  this  foreign 
language,  and  Bishop  Butler  would  persuade  us 
that  whatever  difficulties  it  may  offer  we  have  got 
over  similar  ones  in  accepting  the  laws  of  life. 

8.  But    Bishop     Butler    makes    an    assumption 

which  is  so  far  from  being   considered   allowable 

Subject  of  the    in  the  present  state  of  thought  that  it 

following  pages  : 

an  attempt  to     gives  opportunity   to  some   of  saying 

show  the  analogy 

between  our      that   the   usefulness  of  his   work    has 

knowledge  of 

man  and  our     passed     away.      A     great     error     no 

knowledge  of 

God.  doubt;  but  still  it  is  obvious  that 
the  needs  of  those  who  doubt  the  existence  of  a 
personal  God  cannot  be  wholly  met  by  a  book 
which  assumes  that  fact.  The  brief  hint  which 
Butler  gives  of  the  methods  by  which  he  considers 
the  existence  of  a  personal  God  to  be  proved, 
includes  that  of  analogy,  but  he  gives  no  details. 
To  underpin  his  work  with  a  proof  of  the  being  of 
God  by  means  of  the  same  great  principle  on  which 
the  rest  of  the  structure  depends,  must  be  the  office 
of  some  mind  as  great  as  his.  But  the  matter  is  of 
such  importance  that  to  give  a  few  humble  hints 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  29 

towards  its  solution,  or  even  to  start  the  question, 
may  be  better  than  to  have  remained  silent  on  it. 
The  object,  then,  of  the  following  pages  will  be  to 
show,  firstly,  that  there  is  such  an  analogy  between 
belief  in  personal  man  and  in  a  personal  God,  that 
whoever  accepts  the  one  is  thereby  proved  capable 
of  attaining  to  the  other  ;  and,  secondly,  that  not 
only  do  the  same  difficulties  meet  us  in  believing 
human  personality  as  those  we  have  to  face  in 
believing  that  of  God,  but  the  perplexities  in 
our  knowledge  of  human  nature  are  inexplicable 
unless  we  follow  that  knowledge  out  into  that 
divine  sphere  to  which  its  analogies  lead  us. 

That  we  have  a  certain  knowledge,  not  merely 
of  the  personality  of  this  or  that  man,  but  of  human 
personality  in  general,  is  certain.  It  commences  in 
feelings  and  experiences  long  prior  to  our  capacity 
for  formulating  any  theory  on  the  subject ;  and 
many  people  never  formulate  any  theory  upon  it 
at  all.  But  the  course  of  one's  inward  thoughts 
or  one's  controversy  with  others  may  make  it  so 
necessary  to  state  for  ourselves  the  theory  of  man's 
nature  that  our  practical  treatment  of  humanity 
in  ourselves  or  in  others  may  suffer  total  change 
for  the  worse  if  we  neglect  the  task. 


30  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

When  it  is  necessary  to  give  a  name  to  that 
essential  notion  of  human  nature,  in  which  we  sum 
up  our  knowledge  of  it,  we  all  think  of  this  word 
Personality.  Sometimes,  indeed,  »we  apply  the 
word  superficially  enough  ;  as  when  we  call  any 
additional  knowledge  we  acquire  of  a  man's 
appearance,  manners,  or  even  dress,  an  addition 
to  our  knowledge  of  his  personality.  If  these 
externals,  however,  were  all  the  word  implies  there 
would  be  no  reason  why  we  should  apply  it  to 
man  alone  and  deny  it  to  dogs  and  horses,  which 
have  also  their  peculiarities  of  manner  and  ap- 
pearance. But  without  pretending  to  decide  the 
question  how  far  that  which  makes  man's  per- 
sonality is  or  is  not  a  higher  degree  of  that 
which  is  found  in  the  lower  animals,  it  is  still  a 
fact  that  we  restrict  the  word  to  man.  Manners 
and  appearance  form  parts  of  personality  only 
by  reason  of  their  connection  with  a  deeper  quality 
either  peculiar  to  man,  or  if  it  be  common  to  other 
animals,  yet  not  known  or  .felt  by  us  to  be  so. 
We  shall  not,  however,  spend  time  in  discussing 
the  word  personality.  We  but  use  it  as  summing 
up,  as  well  as  any  word  can  do,  our  peculiar  know- 
ledge of  man.  If  we  be  led  to  any  theory  of  human 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  31 

nature  which  denies  our  peculiar  knowledge  of 
man,  an  immense  alteration  will  be  worked  in 
our  practical  relations  to  other  men.  We  are 
about,  therefore,  to  inquire  what  it  is  that  is  im- 
plied in  human  personality  thus  understood,  and 
under  what  conditions  we  hold  the  knowledge ; 
intending  then  to  ask  the  further  question  whether 
we  do  not  know  God  in  the  same  way.  And  for 
the  reasons  before  stated  we  shall  conduct  the 
inquiry  with  reference  not  merely  to  man's  in- 
tellectual convictions,  but  his  practical  feelings. 

9.  We  shall  suppose  that  a  man  goes  out  for 
a  walk  upon  some  fine  summer's  day.  All  nature 
around  him,  from  the  sun  in  the 

In  spite  of  the 

heavens  above  him   to   the  grass,  the    Wse7apvae'""h 
leaves,   and    the    water,   is    in    corre-      "'on- 
spondence  with  his  senses,  and  through 
them   with  his  mind.     He  can  individualise  each 
of  the    innumerable    organisations    which    make 
up    nature,  as    a    tree,    a   flower,    a   bird,   and  so 
forth.      With    each  of  these  he  can   put  himself 
in  correspondence  by  opening  to  it  the  particular 
faculties  of  his  frame  to  which  it  is   adapted,  as 
sight   or  hearing,  smell   or  taste.      When    this   is 
done  the  object  never  fails  to  respond  and  make 


32  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

itself  felt.  Were  he  so  minded  he  could  devote 
further  attention  to  any  one  of  these  innumerable 
objects  ;  and  if  he  did  so  it  would  reveal  more 
and  more  of  itself,  both  to  sense  and  mind,  with 
various  effects  of  pleasure  and  instruction.  This 
more  particular  attention  has  been  often  called  the 
questioning  of  nature ;  and  the  phrase  scarcely 
implies  a  metaphor.  For  although  the  particular 
Bodily  faculties  which  we  use  in  asking  questions 
of  nature  are  different  from  those  we  use  in  asking 
questions  of  men,  yet  the  process  is  essentially  the 
same.  There  is  the  same  willingness  in  our  minds 
to  receive  knowledge,  and  the  same  resort  to  our 
bodily  faculties  in  order  to  seek  the  knowledge;  be 
it  the  tongue,  the  touch,  or  the  eye,  there  is  no  es- 
sential difference.  There  is  the  same  responsive 
experience  of  sensations  by  which  the  desired 
knowledge  is  conveyed,  be  it  through  ear,  or  eye, 
or  hand.  And  in  each  case  the  mind  gathers  up 
the  sensations  and  carries  them  within  to  make 
what  it  can  of  thqm,  be  that  less  or  more.  So 
far  there  is  no  essential  difference  between  the 
relation  of  other  natural  objects  to  our  faculties 
of  knowledge  and  that  which  is  borne  by  man. 
When  we  come  to  animal  life  the  resemblance 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  33 

to  human  intercourse  is  still  closer.  Your  dog 
runs  beside  you.  Like  yourself  and  like  other 
men  he  is  an  organism  moving  freely  over  the 
ground.  His  movements  are  governed  by  powers 
residing  in  his  own  frame  to  a  degree  not  different 
from  that  physical  self-guidance  which  you  can 
claim  for  yourself  and  for  the  rest  of  mankind. 
He  is  capable  not  merely  of  being  addressed  by 
touch  or  sight,  as  is  the  case  with  inanimate  things, 
but  of  hearing  your  words,  understanding  your 
looks,  and  shewing  such  sympathy  with  the  feelings 
which  you  express  even  unconsciously  to  yourself, 
as  some  of  your  fellow-men  cannot  furnish.  He 
will  come  at  the  sound  of  his  name,  will  fetch  when 
you  bid  him,  will  be  depressed  or  joyful  according 
to  your  mood  ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  his  cheerful 
bark  and  lively  movements  can  communicate  his 
mood  to  you  almost  as  well  as  words  convey  those 
of  man,  and  sometimes  better.  He  is  a  happier 
being  than  man  if  it  be  indeed  true  that,  while  he 
has  a  superior  being  to  love  and  trust,  man  has 
none. 

In  the  course  of  your  walk  you  meet  another 
man.  He  may  be  a  very  unattractive  figure 
indeed,  and  very  probably  you  pass  him  by 

P 


34  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

without  exchanging  a  single  word  with  him.  If 
you  do  speak  to  him  you  may  well  discover  that 
his  power  of  understanding  you  is  extremely  re- 
stricted. You  may  find  yourself  much  more  at 
home  with  your  dog.  The  larger  number  of  your 
questions  and  observations  may  fall  quite  as  dead 
upon  his  ear  as  if  they  had  been  addressed  to  some 
inanimate  object.  This  comparison  indeed  readily 
occurs  to  us,  and  we  say  that  one  might  as  well 
have  been  talking  to  a  stone  as  to  such  a  man. 
Like  the  tree  or  like  the  dog  the  man  presents 
himself  as.  a  mass  of  matter  which  is  in  corre- 
spondence and  communication  with  your  senses 
and  with  your  mind  to  a  certain  limited  extent. 
But  when  upon  your  return  from  your  walk  you 
are  asked  how  many  persons  you  met,  you  will 
say,  only  one.  The  beauty  of  the  various  things 
and  creatures  which  you  have  seen  and  conversed 
with,  and  whose  influence  you  have  so  deeply  felt, 
the  pleasure  they  have  given  you,  the  instruction 
they  have  communicated,  will  altogether  fail  in 
inducing  you  to  confer  upon  any  of  them  the  title 
person. 

This  would  be  a  small  matter  if  it  were  not  for 
the  implications  which  this  word  carries  with  it 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  35 

There  would  be  nothing  more  strange  in  our  ap- 
plying the  mere  word  person  to  an  erect  two-legged 
animal  than  in  giving  the  word  dog  to  one  with 
four  legs.  But  how  much  the  word  implies.  Very 
probably  you  consider  that  it  implies  immortality 
in  the  being  to  whom  you  ascribe  it.  You  consider 
a  person  as  above  the  changes  of  matter  to  a  de- 
gree which  you  do  not  ascribe  to  any  other  being. 
Even  if  you  do  not  believe  in  the  immortality  of 
persons  you  will  acknowledge  that  most  of  mankind 
have  done  so,  and  that  there  is  a  kind  of  appropri- 
ateness in  the  idea,  and  an  anomaly  in  the  death 
of  persons  which  you  do  not  feel  in  the  extinction 
of  things.  Persons  are  in  correspondence  with 
yourself  in  a  way  which  despite  of  all  partial 
resemblances  differs  essentially  from  that  which 
is  held  by  non-personal  organisms.  You  ascribe  to 
persons  a  position  in  the  scale  of  being  altogether 
different  from  these,  and,  perhaps  you  will  add, 
superior  to  them. 

10.  Even  if  a  man  be  not  of  a  very  meditative 
turn  of  mind  he  may  well  pause  and  Wh  dowemake 
ask  himself  why  it  is  that  he  puts  such  thisdifference? 
a  difference  between  some  of  the  appearances 
which  pass  across  his  vision  and  others.  Such 

D  2 


36  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

a  question  may  be  due  to  the  vague  scepticism  of 
feeling  which  comes  over  us  and  bids  us  doubt  the 
warrant   of   any  step    in   knowledge    beyond  our 
immediate  sensations.     But  physical  science  is  de- 
liberate  in    its   utterances,    and    speaks   on    good 
ground,  and  it,  too,  seems  to  bid  us  unify  all  out- 
ward things  in  themselves  and  in  their  relation  to 
us.     It  traces  the  course  of  our  own  sensations  and 
the    impressions    by   which    outward    things    gain 
access  to  us,  and  it  gives  a  physical  aspect  to  the 
whole   process,   whether   the   impression    be    that 
which  makes  us  think  of  a  person  or  that  which 
makes  us  think  of  a  thing.     And  when,  passing 
from  our  means  of  attaining  the  knowledge  of  the 
outward  world,  it  regards  the  world  in  itself,  science 
shows  us  that  the  laws  which  govern  the  forces  and 
the  movements  of  nature  extend  also  to  man.     It 
excepts  no  man,  and    nothing  in  man,  from  the 
persistent  operation  of  these  laws,  and  it  tells  us 
of  nothing  in  man  which  is  not  their  result.     It 
professes  in  these  latter  days  even  to  display  to  us 
the  various  steps  of  the  process  by  which  from  the 
lowest  stage  of  life,  if  not  from  a  point  lower  still, 
the  mind  of  the  creatures  is  developed  stage  after 
stage  until  we  arrive  at  the  mind  of  man.     And  if 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  37 

this  be  really  the  whole  and  sufficient  account  of 
the  matter,  upon  what  does  our  right  depend  of 
calling  man  a  person  when  we  refuse  the  title 
to  any  other  organism  ? 

ii.  Is  it  upon  the  particular  character  of  man's 
outward  form  as  conveyed  to  us  by  the  perceptions 
of  our  senses,  or  upon  any  peculiar  we  do  not  find 

personality  in  our 

beauty  supposed  to  belong  to  it  ?   That  perception  of  the 

material  organi- 

cannot  be  what  constitutes  a  person; 


at  least  it  cannot  be  that  in  which  the  distinctive 
quality  which  we  attach  to  man  resides,  be  that' 
quality  expressed  by  the  word  person  or  not. 
Many  other  forms  appear  to  us  quite  as  wonderful 
and  quite  as  beautiful  as  that  of  man.  It  would 
be  a  strange  account  of  the  matter,  and  would 
not  in  the  least  meet  the  facts,  to  maintain  that 
though  we  refuse  the  name  of  person  to  a  tree 
standing  erect  with  head  and  limbs,  and  to  a  dog 
moving  freely  over  the  ground,  yet  when  we  see 
a  form  at  once  erect  and  in  free  motion  we  give 
it  the  name  of  person,  with  all  the  wonderful  im- 
plications included  in  the  word. 

Does  the  distinctive  idea  of  man  reside  then  in 
the  subtle  and  delicate  character  of  the  organism 
which  we  know  to  underlie  his  outward  form,  and 


38  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

in  the  curious  and  complicated  action  which  results 
in  his  life  ?  The  fact  is  that  under  the  form  of 
a  tree,  and  even  under  forms  much  lower  still, 
there  lie  adjustments  which  are  infinitely  wonder- 
ful and  infinitely  beyond  our  understanding.  The 
smallest  leaf  that  grows  affords  us  in  its  origin  and 
the  provision  for  its  life  overwhelming  evidence 
of  this.  And  though  there  may  be  in  man  a 
greater  number  and  complexity  of  such  arrange- 
ments, we  cannot  justly  say  that  he  is  physically 
more  wonderful  than  those  other  things  which 
have  been  admitted  to  be  infinitely  wonderful ; 
infinity  is  not  capable  of  degrees.  The  same  may 
be  said  of  the  results  of  the  adjustments  as  of  the 
adjustments  themselves.  We  cannot  understand 
at  all  better  how  the  flower  produces  on  us  the 
impressions  of  colour  and  scent,  than  how  the  poet 
gives  forth  his  verse  for  our  delight.  Wonderful 
as  the  latter  result  may  be,  it  yet  differs  only  in 
degree  from  the  former.  And  any  reasons  for 
calling  the  poet  a  person,  which  are  founded 
merely  upon  his  curious  organisation  and  the 
wondrous  results  which  it  sends  out  to  the  world, 
must  inevitably  give  way  when  we  consider  with- 
out prejudice  the  claims  of  his  humbler  rivals. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  39 

12.  It  may  be  suggested  that,  apart  from  the 
connection  between  the  intellect  of  man  and  his 
organisation,  intellect  itself  is  a  possession  of 
such  a  distinctive  character  as  to  Nor  in  the 

intelligence  we 

stamp  its  owner  with  a  peculiar  perceive  in  them. 
character  and  demand  a  peculiar  title,  even  if 
that  title  should  prophesy  for  him  a  future 
destiny  different  from  that  of  all  the  world 
besides.  Now  intellect  is  a  word  which  in  a  loose 
way  may  be  taken  to  designate  the  whole  inward 
constitution  of  man.  And  if  the  expression  be 
used  thus  widely  we  must  needs  conceive  man's 
distinctive  quality  to  lie  in  his  intellect,  because 
we  have  already  decided  that  it  cannot  lie  in  his 
outward  form.  But  most  people  will  allow  that 
it  is  only  a  loose  and  inaccurate  application  of 
the  word  intellect  which  lets  into  it  so  wide  a 
signification.  Nearly  every  one  would  reply  to 
the  question,  whether  man's  inward  constitution 
includes  anything  besides  intellect,  by  admitting 
that  it  does.  A  man  composed  of  body  and 
intellect  alone  might  be  in  some  respects  above, 
but  would  be  in  more  important  respects  below, 
the  normal  and  proper  type  of  man. 
When  we  take  the  word  intellect  in  its  proper 


40  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

signification  of  understanding  and  as  denoting 
only  a  part  of  the  inward  powers  and  endowments 
of  man,  we  must  feel  the  greatest  doubt  whether 
the  reason  why  we  set  man  so  entirely  apart  from 
other  things  and  from  other  animals  can  be  found 
in  his  intellect.  How  is  it  possible,  for  instance, 
to  deny  intellect  to  those  of  the  lower  animals 
whose  lives  are  so  closely  united  with  that  of 
man  ?  The  usefulness  of  dogs  and  of  horses  to 
us  depends  not  upon  their  brute  strength  but  upon 
their  capacity  for  education,  and  their  power  of 
understanding  our  objects  and  contributing  to 
them.  The  pleasure  which  we  derive  from  their 
companionship  consists  in  watching  and  in  de- 
veloping that  which  we  cannot  but  call  their 
intelligence.  A  hundred  phrases  in  common  use 
and  a  hundred  daily  experiences  show  how  men 
believe  in  the  intellect  of  these  friends  and  in- 
struments of  their  mental  life.  If  we  consider 
how  we  treat  them  and  how  they  respond  to  our 
treatment,  it  will  seem  more  difficult  to  say  why 
it  is  that  we  refuse  them  the  title  of  person  than 
to  point  to  the  distinctive  quality  in  man  because 
of  which  we  give  it  to  him. 

13.  We    must    upon    the    whole    pronounce    it 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  41 

impossible  to  say  upon  what  grounds  of  purely 
outward  experience,  comparing  man  as  an  object 
of  observation  with  the  other  objects  it  is  found  first 

in  our  own  self- 

with   which  we  hold   converse   in  life,     consciousness 

and  then  ascribed 

we  can  set  him  so  apart  from  them  to  other  men. 
as  we  do.  The  question  then  arises,  what  can 
we  find  in  man  beyond  our  outward  experience 
of  him  and  his  manifestations  of  himself,  in 
which  his  personality  can  consist,  and  how  other 
men  attain  to  the  knowledge  of  it  ?  Now  St. 
Paul,  in  a  well-known  passage,  instructs  us  that 
knowledge  of  the  secrets  of  human  nature  springs 
up  first  within  a  man's  own  breast,  and  thence 
is  communicated  to  others.  "  What  man  knoweth 
the  things  of  a  man,  save  the  spirit  of  man 
which  is  in  him?"  (i  Cor.  ii.  n.)  And  this  is 
the  account  of  our  distinctive  feeling  about  other 
men  which  probably  most  of  us  will  accept.  Our 
knowledge  that  other  men  possess  personality 
depends  upon  our  knowledge  that  we  have  it 
ourselves.  Nothing  could  possibly  have  revealed 
to  us  the  thought  of  such  a  thing  if  we  had  not 
found  the  consciousness  of  it  within.  We  seem 
driven  to  adopt  this  account  of  our  belief  in  the 
personality  of  other  men  by  sheer  inability  to 


f&r 


42  MAWS  KNO  WLEDGE 

discover  any  other  method  of  accounting  for  it. 
The  idea  which  the  word  expresses  is  excessively 
marked  and  distinctive,  and  our  feeling  towards 
those  to  whom  we  apply  it  is  as  different  as 
possible  from  that  which  we  have  to  other  beings 
and  things  ;  yet  it  is  impossible  to  discover  the 
ground  for  this  in  the  difference  between  human 
beings  as  objects  of  our  observation,  and  the  other 
myriad  objects  which  meet  us  in  the  world.  But 
we  can  account  for  the  matter  on  the  principle 
that  other  persons  are  to  us  not  merely  objects, 
but  such  objects  as  are  a  kind  of  repetition  or 
image  of  our  own  subjective  consciousness. 

We  are  thrown  back,  therefore,  upon  our  know- 
ledge of  our  own  personality.  And  in  order  to 
make  our  analysis  in  anywise  complete,  we  must 
proceed  to  consider  how  and  on  what  conditions 
it  is  that  we  possess  any  such  knowledge  of  our- 
selves. We  shall  then  have  to  inquire  what 
grounds  we  have  for  extending  the  same  belief 
to  other  people.  Now,  to  ask  what  we  mean  by 
our  personality  is  to  ask  what  we  mean  by  the 
words  "  I  myself." 

14.  When  we  ask  that  question  we  are  speedily 
struck  by  the  fact  that  we  do  not  use  the  phrase 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  43 

"I  myself"  with  uniformity,  but  sometimes  include 
in  its  signification  a  great  many  things  which  at 
other  times  we  exclude  from  it. 

Thus  a  general  might  say,  "  I  myself  fell  upon  the 
enemy's  army" — appearing  to  include  within  his  own 
self  the  whole  mass  of  men  which  moves  The  extension  of 
at  his  command.  A  man  might  say,  ^^  ^ 
"I  myself,  while  living  in  England  was  always the same' 
calumniated  in  India,"  thus  comprising  within  the 
self  of  a  man  living  in  England  a  kind  of  atmo- 
sphere of  reputation  extending  to  the  most  distant 
parts  of  the  world.  Doubtless,  it  will  be  said 
that  these  are  metaphorical  and  figurative  ways  of 
speech.  This  need  not  be  questioned.  But  it  will 
be  very  hard  to  show  that  they  are  more  figurative 
or  improper  than  many  other  ways  of  speech 
which  pass  for  being  perfectly  literal.  Suppose 
one  to  say  "  I  struck  him,"  the  word  "  I  "  might 
well  be  thought  to  be  here  used  in  an  entirely 
literal  sense.  If  so,  the  self  which  the  word  "  I  " 
denotes  must  include  the  hand  with  which  the 
blow  was  struck.  But  when  we  use  the  equiva- 
lent expression  "  I  struck  him  with  my  hand,"  we 
see  at  once  that  the  hand  is  regarded  not  as  a 
part  of  the  self  but  as  a  possession  of  the  self 


44  AfAWS  KNO  WLEDGE 

which  it  uses  as  its  instrument.  The  very  words 
"my  hand"  show  that  the  hand  is  not  a 
part  of  the  self,  but  something  of  which  the 
self  regards  itself  as  owner  to  use  as  it  may 
desire.  If  this  were  a  mere  matter  of  words  it 
would  not  be  worth  mentioning.  But  it  corre- 
sponds to  our  consciousness  and  to  the  facts  of 
the  case.  When  we  say  "  I  struck  him  "  we  really 
do  mean  to  include  the  hand  in  the  self,  and  yet, 
when  we  say  "  my  hand  "  we  really  feel  and  really 
mean  to  say  that  the  hand  is  objective  to  the  self, 
and  stands  outside  of  it  and  is  possessed  by  it,  not 
otherwise  than  the  house  in  which  the  man  lives. 

We  go  further  inward  and  ask  whether,  if  the 
hand  with  which  the  blow  was  struck  is  not  a 
part  of  the  self,  the  notion  or  the  passion  which 
has  originated  the  blow  is  not  a  part  of  it.  But 
it  is  not.  We  say  my  notions  and  my  passions. 
And  when  we  use  these  phrases  we  really  imply 
that  our  central  self  is  felt  to  be  something  dif- 
ferent from  the  notions  or  passions  which  belong 
to  it  or  characterise  it  for  a  time.  The  reality  of 
the  self  subsists  underneath  these  colours  of  its 
life  and  subsists  when  they  are  gone,  just  as  a 
wall  might  pass  under  various  species  of  decora- 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  45 

tion  yet  never  receive  any  of  them  below  its 
surface.  Beliefs  and  feelings  are  things  which 
belong  to,  but  are  not,  the  genuine  self.  Thus 
our  central  self  retires  before  our  thought  like 
some  retreating  army  which  takes  up  one  posi- 
tion after  another :  as  each  is  carried  it  is  found 
that  the  self  is  not  there  but  further  within. 
Each  power,  each  acquirement,  each  habit  ap- 
pears successively  first  as  a  part  of  the  man  as 
others  know  him  and  as  he  thinks  of  himself, 
and  then  as  something  which  the  self  can  hold 
from  it  and  declare  to  be  separate.1 

15.  And  how  far  might  this  process  go  on? 
Could  we  ever  reach  some  capacity  or  some 
quality  so  central  that  we  should  be  in  the  last  resort 

the  meaning  of 

able  to  say,  not  in  any  mere  colloquial    the  phrase  "i 

myself"  runs  up 

sense  but  in  all  senses,  "This  is  myself,    into  a  mystery. 
From  this  I   cannot  imagine  myself  to  be  sepa- 
rated or   distinguished  ;  I  cannot  imagine  myself 
calling  this  mine  but  always  me"  ?   We  never  could 

1  "  It  may  appear  not  a  paradox  merely  but  a  contradiction  to  say 
that  the  organism  is  at  once  within  and  without  the  mind,  is  at  once 
subjective  and  objective,  is  at  once  ego  and  non  ego,  but  so  it 
is." — Sir  W.  Hamilton.  [Reid's  Works,  p.  880,  note.]  It  is 
plain  that  the  very  same  double  treatment  which  Hamilton  here 
applies  to  the  body  is  applicable  to  the  mind.  Mind,  as  well 
as  body,  denotes  something  that  may  be  objective  and  may  be 
subjective. 


46  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

find  any  such  quality.  Whatever  faculty  either 
of  body  or  of  mind  can  be  grasped  and  repre- 
sented to  the  mind  turns  out  also  to  be  some- 
thing which  the  central  self  puts  from  it,  and 
with  which  it  refuses  to  be  identified.  And  thus 
when  our  mental  faculties  strive  to  grasp  our 
own  nature  they  are  always  baulked.  They  find 
ever  before  them  a  mystery.  They  have  the 
power  to  recognize  the  existence  of  the  self, 
and  it  never  vanishes  from  them  into  nothing- 
ness ;  but  they  have  no  power  to  understand  its 
nature  or  to  tell  what  it  is.  It  is  real,  the  most 
certain  reality  in  all  life ;  the  very  pivot  on  which 
life  turns  ;  that  in  comparison  of  which  not  only 
our  material  possessions,  our  state  and  circum- 
stances, not  only  our  body  and  all  its  parts  and 
powers  without  and  within,  but  even  our  mind, 
with  all  its  habits  and  endowments,  must  be  pro- 
nounced external  and  unessential.1  And  yet  this 

1  Peters,  Willenswelt  und  Weltwille,  pp.  293,  294. 

"  Show  a  man  to  himself  as  a  material  thing ;  take  out  of  his 
brain  his  pineal  gland,  or  whatever  else  you  please,  and  presenting 
it  to  him  on  a  plate  say,  'That,  sir,  is  you,  your  ego ' :  the  exhibition, 
supposing  it  possible,  would  instantly  prove  that  the  self  so  shown 
was  not  himself,  for  the  man  would  say,  '  I  know  myself  along  with 
that  material  thing.'  " — Ferrier's  Institutes  of  Metaphysic,  p.  221. 

"  I  am  not  the  anger  or  the  pain  which  I  experience,  any  more 
than  I  am  the  chair  or  the  table  which  I  perceive." — Ibid.  p.  232. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  47 

essential  self  cannot  be  made  the  subject  of 
thought:  it  is  known  not  in  itself  but  in  its 
effects.1 

We  may  rest  assured  that  the  sense  of  this 
mysterious  reality  at  the  centre  of  our  own  being 
is  not  a  mere  puzzle  for  the  weak  and  ignorant. 
Some  of  the  strongest  thinkers  have  recognized 
it.2  And  though  there  are  schools  which  in  their 
repugnance  to  mysteries  have  refused  to  acknow- 
ledge anything  in  the  self  except  a  bundle  of  sensa- 
tions and  thoughts,  or  capacities  of  sensations 

1  "It  is  not  by  any  after-effort   of  reflection  that  I   combine 
together  sight  and  hearing,  thought  and  volition,  into  a  factitious 
unity  or  compounded  whole :  in  each  case  I  am  immediately  consci- 
ous of  myself  seeing  and  hearing,   willing  and   thinking.      This 
self-personality  like  all  other  simple  and  immediate  presentations 
is  indefinable  :  but  it  is  so,  because  it  is  superior  to  definition. 
The  extravagant  speculations  in  which  metaphysicians  attempted 
to  explain  the  nature  and  properties  of  the  soul  as  it  is  not  given  in 
consciousness,  furnish  no  valid  ground  for  renouncing  all  inquiry 
into  its  character  as  it  is  given  as  a  power  conscious  of  itself  " — 
Mansel's  Prolegomena  Logica,  p.  139. 

2  Willenswelt  und   IVellwille,  pp.  84,  99,   99,  and  the  passages 
gathered  from  Kant. 

"  The  thoughts  and  feelings  of  which  we  are  conscious  are  con- 
tinually changing :  but  something  which  I  call  myself  remains 
under  this  change  of  thought.  This  self  has  the  same  relation  to 
all  the  successive  thoughts  I  am  conscious  of — they  are  all  my 
thoughts.  If  any  man  asks  a  proof  of  this,  I  confess  I  can  give 
none  ;  there  is  an  evidence  in  the  proposition  itself  which  I  am 
unable  to  resist.  Shall  I  think  that  thought  can  stand  by  itself 
without  a  thinking  being?  or  that  ideas  can  feel  pleasure  or  pain?  ' 
— Rd(fs  Works  by  Hamilton,  p.  443. 


4 8  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

and  thought,  yet  the  impossibility  of  ignoring 
the  something  which  is  felt  as  existing  behind 
every  feeling  has  proved  too  strong  for  their 
systems,  and  again  and  again  they  have  been 
found  admitting  the  mysterious  reality,  and 
acknowledging  that  nothing  which  can  be  told 
to  man  of  the  structure  of  his  body,  nor  yet  of 
the  faculties  of  his  mind,  can  reveal  to  him  what 
he  is  in  himself.1 


1  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill's  conception  of  the  ego  (Examination  of  Sir 
W.  Hamilton,  chapter  xii. )  does  not  essentially  differ  from  that  of 
Hume.  "If  we  speak  of  the  mind  as  a  series  of  feelings  we  are 
obliged  to  complete  the  statement  by  calling  it  a  series  of  feelings 
which  is  aware  of  itself  as  past  and  future  :  and  we  are  reduced  to 
the  alternative  of  believing  that  the  mind  or  ego  is  something 
different  from  any  series  of  feelings  or  possibilities  of  them  or  of 
accepting  the  paradox  that  something  which  ex  hypothesi  is  but  a 
series  of  feelings,  can  be  aware  of  itself  as  a  series.  The  truth  is 
that  we  are  here  face  to  face  with  that  final  inexplicability  at  which, 
as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  observes,  we  inevitably  arrive  when  we  reach 
ultimate  facts."  Thus  we  have  Mr.  Mill  admitting  that  there  is  a 
mystery  in  the  ego  however  you  take  it.  We  have,  he  says,  but  to 
choose  between  two  statements  of  the  nature  of  the  mystery;  either, 
(i),  that  the  ego  is  something  different  from  the  series  of  feelings 
and  possibilities  of  them,  or  (2),  that  it  is  not  only  a  series  of 
feelings  and  possibilities  of  them,  but  has  ?the  strange  and  para- 
doxical quality  that  it  is  also  a  sense  of  the  possibility  of  a  series 
of  feelings  past  and  future.  Mr.  Mill  prefers  the  latter  state- 
ment of  the  case,  but  we  unhesitatingly  pronounce  for  the  other. 
First,  because  when  he  offers  the  word  "  mind  "  as  the  complete 
equivalent  of  ego,  he  thereby  shows  that  he  does  not  realise  the 
problem  which  the  words  "  I  myself"  present,  and  which  consists 
in  this,  that  we  feel  ourselves  to  be  something  so  far  different  from 
our  minds  as  well  as  from  our  bodies  that  the  one  as  much  as  the 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  49 

And  yet  the  structure  of  his  body  and  the 
analysis  of  his  mind  convey  to  man  the  revela- 
tion of  things  which  deeply  concern  his  true  self 
although  they  do  not  constitute  it,  and  which 
show  him  the  work  of  his  self  and  the  means 
by  which  his  self  may  be  dealt  with  even  while 
it  remains  in  its  essence  a  mystery  to  him.  To 
tell  the  nature  of  the  instruments  with  which  I 
must  work  and  without  the  use  of  which  I  cannot 
make  even  my  existence  known,  is  to  tell  me 
something  of  myself;  to  relate  what  I  have  done 
in  time  gone  by  by  means  of  these  instruments, 
is  to  tell  me  the  history  of  myself  and  of  my 

other  must  be  regarded  as  a  possession  of  the  self,  and  therefore  not 
identical  with  it.  Second,  because  the  abstract  term  "possibility  of 
feeling  "  is  quite  inadequate  to  express  the  concrete  notion  we  have 
of  ourselves  as  beings  who  are  capable  of  feeling ;  and  leaves 
wholly  out  of  account  the  knowledge  which  accompanies  every 
present  feeling,  that  it  is  felt  by  some  one  and  implies  the  existence 
of  something  besides  itself.  The  same  observations  apply  to 
Professor  Huxley's  defence  of  Hume's  position  (English  Men  of 
Letters,  Hume,  chapter  ix.).  When  Hume  says  "I  never  can 
catch  myself  without  a  perception,  and  never  can  observe  anything 
but  the  perception,"  we  may  quite  agree  with  the  first  clause,  for  it 
actually  implies  the  recognition  of  two  things,  "myself"  and 
"a  perception."  But  this  not  only  does  not  imply,  but  actually 
contradicts,  the  second  clause,  in  which  Hume  plainly  intimates 
that  he  can  catch  the  perception  without  the  self;  which  is,  perhaps, 
the  hardiest  statement,  says  Professor  Ferrier,  ever  hazarded  in 
philosophy. 


50    MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE  OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD. 

doings  in  the  past.  And  the  same  history  tells 
how  self  may  be  reached  and  affected,  namely, 
through  those  faculties  which  are  known  to  be  in 
constant  contact  with  it. 


II. 

SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 

"  What  man  knoweth  the  things  of  a  man,  save  the  spirit  of  man 
which  is  in  him  ?  " — i  COR.  ii.  n. 

16.  WE  use  the  words  "I"  and  "myself"  with 
various  extensions  of  meaning.  But  these  various 
uses  fall  into  two  great  classes  which  TWO  aspects  in 

which  we  are 

we  may  call  the  historical  or  objective,     presented  to 

ourselves. 

and  the  active  or  subjective  meanings   i.  Historically: 

as  filling  a  place 
Of  the    term.  in  the  world, 

By  the  historical  meaning  of  the  phrase  "  I 
myself"  is  denoted  that  use  of  the  words  by  which 
we  set  ourselves  apart  from  ourselves,  and  con- 
template the  body  and  the  mind  which  belong 
to  us  as  filling  a  place  in  the  world,  and  having 
a  past  history  which  may  be  remembered  and  a 
future  history  which  may  be  foreseen.  When  we 
remember  the  sayings  and  doings  of  this  "I 

E  2 


52  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

myself"  as  they  have  proceeded  and  are  still 
proceeding,  they,  and  the  organism  which  has 
enacted  them,  fill  a  place  as  objective  to  our 
thought  as  any  other  organism  in  the  world.  This 
ego  is  part  of  the  system  of  things  ;  its  action  is 
determined  by  what  surrounds  it,  and  by  the 
forces  which  it  includes  within  itself.  Very  often 
our  meaning  would  be  nearly  as  well  conveyed 
by  substituting  our  name  for  the  words  "I  myself" 
in  recalling  to  ourselves  what  we  remember  of  the 
part  which  the  organism  we  call  ours  has  performed 
in  the  world.  And  this,  as  certain  metaphysicians 
have  remarked,  is  what  children  and  childish 
people  are  prone  to  do.  They  say,  "  Baby  did 
it,"  or  the  like,  instead  of  "  I  did  it." 

To  be  sure  this  does  not  express  the  whole  past 
fact  as  it  is  felt  by  people  whose  minds  are  de- 
veloped, and  even  probably  in  some  vague  way  by 
these  childish  minds  themselves.  The  objective 
form  of  the  action  takes  possession  of  their  minds  ; 
but  probably  not  so  entirely  that  the  subjective 
absolutely  vanishes.  Can  we  believe  that  when  the 
child  says  "  Baby  did  it,"  there  is  absolutely  no 
difference  to  it  except  in  the  vividness  of  the 
impression  which  the  action  has  made  on  its  own 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD. 


mind  between  this  act  and  one  which  it  has  seen 
done  by  some  one  else  ?  It  is  probably  true  that 
though  the  outward,  and,  so  to  speak,  impersonal 
form  ot  the  act  be  the  most  prominent  to  the 
child,  there  is  hidden  underneath  it  a  germ  of 
that  self-consciousness  which  in  after  years  will 
make  the  objective  and  impersonal  aspect  of  all 
present  or  vividly  realised  actions  secondary,  and 
the  personal  form  expressed  by  the  word  "  I " 
the  primary  and  prominent  form  under  which  he 
thinks  of  them.1  It  is  certain  that  the  latter  is 
the  way  in  which  we  think  of  our  actual  doings 
when  our  minds  have  come  to  maturity.  Along 
with  all  the  historical  and  objective  representation 
which  sets  "myself"  before  the  mind  as  simply 
part  of  the  world's  scene,  and  as  an  operation  of 
the  forces  and  powers  of  nature,  there  abides  also 
a  kind  of  consciousness  of  a  deeper  and  more 
personal  connection  of  an  inner  self  with  the 
business.2 


1882),  p.  180. 

2  "It  is  the  empirical  consciousness  which  informs  ine  that  there 
are  in  myself  perceptions,  remembrances,  representations,  and  in- 
ternal diversity  :  it  is  the  transcendental  consciousness  which  furnishes 
me  with  the  idea  represented  by  the  word  '  I,'  the  subject  always 
the  same  and  identical." — Kant.  See  Jeanmaire,  pp.  93-103,  and 
his  criticisms,  pp.  116,  119. 


54  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

17.  Upon  this  consciousness  apparently  depends 
our  sense  of  personal  identity.     Very  great  stress 
has    been    laid    upon    the    wonderful    continuity 
and  as  having  a    which   this    sense    establishes    in    our 

sense  of  personal 

identity.  lives,  whereby  we  are  assured  that 
among  surroundings  the  most  various,  and  under 
changes  of  bodily  form  and  of  mental  acquire- 
ment and  disposition,  we  are  still  the  same 
individuals.  And  this  is  certainly  a  remarkable 
class  of  facts.  But  we  must  not  forget  the  impor- 
tant part  which  the  objective  representation  of  self 
holds  in  our  remembrance  of  past  actions,  espe- 
cially when  they  become  distant  and  are  thought 
of  more  as  events  than  as  actions.  We  are  even 
capable  of  supposing  that  we  ourselves  took  part 
in  scenes  which  we  have  frequently  imagined — as 
King  George  IV.  believed  that  he  had  been  present 
at  Waterloo.  And  in  dreams  there  seems  to  be 
a  kind  of  successive  transfer  of  the  sense  of  self 
from  one  party  in  a  scene  to  another,  so  that  it 
is  hard  to  say  whether  each  person  who  speaks  or 
acts  becomes  to  us  for  the  moment  the  "I  myself" 
or  whether  there  is  properly  no  "  I  myself"  present 
to  consciousness  at  all. 

1 8.  It  seems  that  it  is  in  the  very  moment  of 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  55 

conscious  action  that  the  presence  and  power  of 
the  mysterious  ego  is  really  felt.1  As  action  pro- 
ceeds this  mysterious  self  comes  in  2.  Activelyas 
every  successive  moment  out  of  its 
obscurity  into  life  and  work.  Not  one  t 
unit  of  time,  even  the  most  minute  which 
imagination  can  reach,  elapses  before  the  mysterious 
self  puts  on  the  familiar  forms  of  human  life  and 
action.  No  mind  can  ever  see  it  uninvested  with 
these  or  imagine  what  it  is  without  them.2  The 
clothing  of  life  covers  the  whole  figure  of  the 
self.  We  feel  that  it  does  not  constitute  the  true 
self;  but  this  true  self  cannot  be  represented  in 
thought  or  described.  For  representation  in  thought 
the  inward  self  is  caught  up  into  the  self  of  obser- 
vation ;  in  which  aspect  its  desires,  its  thinking,  its 
mental  life  appear  to  follow  lines  as  invariable  and 
as  physically  caused  as  the  rails  which  compel 


1  Jeanmaire,  p.  196.  "  The  continuity  of  my  individual  existence 
ought  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  direct  intuition  of  my  identity." 

"  "  The  ego  never  can  be  known  as  a  completed  non-material  ex- 
istence, because  it  can  be  known  only  as  the  universal  element  of  all 
cognition  ;  but  this  universal  element  by  itself — that  is,  dissociated 
from  any  particular  element — is  absolutely  unknowable  ;  and  there- 
fore if  the  reader  expects  a  proof  of  the  existence  of  himself  as  a 
completed  immaterial  entity,  irrespective  of  his  association  with  all 
particular  things  and  all  determinate  states,  he  must  for  ever  be 
disappointed." — Ferrier,  Institutes  of  Metaphysics,  p.  248. 


56  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

a  locomotive  engine  to  hold  its  course.  The  power 
of  physical  surroundings  in  mental  history  is  un- 
deniable ;  the  same  external  causes  and  the  same 
internal  motives  must  invariably  produce  the  same 
actions.  Vain  is  the  imagination  that  we  can  strive 
against  our  circumstances  and  against  the  motives 
which  operate  most  strongly  upon  our  bodily  and 
mental  frame.  And  thus  we  think  of  ourselves  in 
the  past,  and  all  the  way  up  to  the  very  verge  ot 
the  moment  of  our  actual  existence  ;  and  thus  we 
regard  ourselves  in  the  future  all  the  way  forward 
from  that  moment.  As  the  notion  of  a  tree  is 
made  up  of  the  place  where  it  is  planted,  and  oi 
the  appearance  which  it  presents,  and  of  the 
functions  of  growth  and  movement  with  which 
we  know  it  to  be  endowed  and  from  which  certain 
results  may  invariably  be  anticipated,  so  also  it  is 
with  man.  He  presents  himself  to  his  own  thought 
with  only  such  difference  from  the  tree  as  is  caused 
by  the  greater  complexity  of  the  functions  which 
a  man  performs.  So  much  is  this  the  case  that 
the  question  has  been  raised  whether  after  all,  this 
is  not  the  only  sense  in  which  the  word  "  I  "  can 
be  used ;  and  whether  our  perception  of  the  place 
which  our  body  and  our  mind  take  in  the 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  57 

series  of  the  world's  history  is  not  all  that  we 
mean  by  our  self  and  all  that  constitutes  our  self- 
consciousness. 

But  if  this  were  so,  all  that  really  gives  us  the 
sense  of  either  possession  or  responsibility  in  the 
sayings  and  doings  of  the  self  would  vanish.  We 
should  find  ourselves  looking  idly  upon  the  move- 
ments of  our  mind  and  our  moral  nature  precisely 
as  we  look  upon  the  involuntary  twitching  of 
muscles  in  our  feet,  or  feel  the  beating  of  our 
heart,  or  notice  in  the  glass  that  our  hair  is  getting 
grey.  Nay,  it  would  seem  that  we  must  needs 
take  still  a  further  step,  and  break  the  slender 
bond  by  which  even  such  purely  physical  changes 
belong  to  ourselves  and  are  said  to  happen  to  us. 
Everything .  in  us  would  pass  imperceptibly  into 
the  system  of  nature  without  any  real  distinction 
between  the  two.  Not  only  would  there  be  no 
"myself"  but  nothing  would  be  mine  at  all.  And 
this  will  always  be  found  a  practical  absurdity 
which  we  cannot  bring  ourselves  to  face.1 

19.  There    is    an    argument    arising     Self  cannot  be 

directly  known 

from    the     very    nature     of    thought     as  a  subject; 
which    has    been    considered    to    prove    that  the 

1  Jeanmaire,  p.  200. 


58  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

historical  or  objective  sense  of  the  ego  is  the 
only  one  that  can  be  known  to  us.  Nothing  (it 
is  urged)  can  be  known  to  us  except  as  an 
object  of  thought.  Therefore  even  we  ourselves, 
when  we  become  objects  of  our  own  thought,  lose 
our  subjective  character.  The  object  is  unthink- 
able. Even  in  such  elementary  actions  of  the 
self  as  are  expressed  by  the  words  "  I  think/'  the 
"  I "  when  we  try  to  grasp  it  must  become  an  object ; 
and  if  it  does  it  falls  into  the  same  category  as  the 
rest  of  the  things  we  bring  before  our  minds.  The 
"  I "  which  thinks  will  be  something  just  as  much 
known  and  just  as  little  known  as  the  rest  of  the 
things  in  the  world.  There  will  be  no  difference. 
Everything  has  in  it  an  unknowable  element,  and 
runs  up  in  its  origin  and  in  its  existence  to 
something  which  cannot  be  understood.  So 
and  no  otherwise,  will  it  be  with  the  self.  It  will 
be  like  everything  else,  a  wonderful  and  incom- 
prehensible item  in  a  wonderful  and  incompre- 
hensible system  of  things.  The  very  nature  of 
thought  forbids  it  to  be  conceived  in  any  other 
way. 

It  has  sometimes  been  replied  to  this  reasoning 
that  somehow  or  other  the  subject  can  be  thought 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  59 

of  as  subject.1  But  that  does  not  appear  to  be 
possible  ; 2  we  cannot  think  of  ourselves  without 
placing  ourselves  as  objects  before  our  own  minds, 
and  therefore  regarding  ourselves  as  being  or  doing 
some  one  of  those  thinkable  facts  which  can  alone 
make  us  capable  of  being  represented.  We  must 
stir  the  surface  of  the  world's  affairs  somehow 
before  it  can  be  known  even  to  ourselves  that  we 
are  there  at  all.  But  a  better  reply  is  that  though 
the  subject  cannot,  as  such,  be  made  matter  of 
thought,  yet  thought  seems  quite  capable  of 
grasping  the  fact  that  the  subject  exists.  For 
instance,  when  we  say  "  I  think,"  we  predicate 
the  act  of  thinking  which  we  can  understand,  of 
a  subject  "  I,"  which  on  trial  we  find  we  cannot 
understand  at  all.  To  understand  it  we  have  to 
make  an  object  of  it  and  call  it  a  thinking  power, 
but  our  understanding  is  quite  equal  to  seeing 
that  the  "  I "  is  something  different  from  the  act 
of  thinking,  and  that  this  appears  from  the  very 

1  See  Professor  Momerie,   Agnosticism,   p.  37.     I  cannot  agree 
with  the  argument  of  the  same  clever  writer  :  "If  we  know  our- 
selves,  all  knowledge   does   not  imply  the  relation  of  subject  and 
object." — Personality,  p.  40. 

2  "As  regards  internal  intuition  we  cognise  our  own  subject  only 
as  phenomenon,  and  not  as  it  is  in  itself." — Kant,  Critique  of  Pure 
Reason,    Meiklejohn's    translation,    p.    95.     (See  Professor  Caird, 
Philosophy  of  Kant,  pp.  334,  401.) 


60  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

words  "  I  think  "  themselves.  For  if  the  "  I  "  were 
not  something  separable  from  the  thinking,  and 
had  not  an  existence  apart  from  it,  then  "  I  think  " 
would  be  merely  equivalent  to  the  proposition 
"  that  which  thinks,  thinks,"  and  this  does  not 
represent  the  felt  reality  of  the  case.1  Thus  the 
very  argument  advanced  to  prove  the  empirical 
nature  of  the  ego  is  that  which  shows  us  most 
clearly  that  we  are  in  presence  of  a  mystery  in 
ourselves — an  inward  and  personal  mystery  clearly 
distinguishable  from  the  general  mystery  which 
encompasses  all  things.  For  if  nothing  can  be 
known  to  us  save  as  an  object,  then  the  subject  of 
knowledge  must  be  something  we  cannot  know  ; 
yet  the  very  assertion  that  we  know  implies  the 
existence  of  such  a  subject.  And  this  is,  and  ever 
must  remain,  a  mystery. 

Mr.   Herbert  Spencer   maintains  that   it   is   an 


1  "  Man  is  a  phenomenon  of  the  sensuous  world,  and  at  the  same 
time,  therefore,  a  natural  cause,  the  causalty  of  which  must  be 
regulated  by  natural  laws.  As  such,  he  must  possess  an  empirical 
character  like  all  other  natural  phenomena.  .  .  .  But  man,  to  whom 
nature  reveals  itself  only  through  sense,  cognises  himself  not  only 
by  his  senses,  but  also  through -pure  apperception.  ...  He  is  thus 
to  himself,  on  the  one  hand,  a  phenomenon,  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
in  respect  of  certain  faculties,  a  purely  intelligible  object— intelligible 
because  its  action  cannot  be  ascribed  to  sensuous  receptivity. " — Kant, 
Critique  of  Ptire  Reason,  ed.  Bohn,  p.  338. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  61 

illusion  to  suppose  that  the  self  at  each  moment 
is  anything  more  than  the  aggregate  of  feelings 
and  ideas,  actual  and  nascent,  which  then  exists.1 
Is  he  right  in  this?  When  we  say  " my  feelings" 
we  imply,  according  to  all  the  usage  of  language, 
the  existence  of  feelings  and  of  an  owner  of  them. 
According  to  Mr.  Spencer  the  feelings  are  real, 
but  the  owner  of  them  is  an  illusion.  But  this  is 
certainly  not  the  case.  Illusion  is  a  word  which 
has  a  definite  meaning  in  the  world  of  objects, 
and  denotes  a  certain  class  of  appearances  among 
those  with  which  life  brings  us  in  contact.  When 
you  have  seen  an  illusion  you  have  in  the  first  place 
seen  an  appearance,  and  in  the  second  place  you 
have  found  out  that  appearance  to  be  deceptive, 

1  Elements  of  Psychology,  vol.  i.  p.  500.  Professor  Momerie 
(Personality,  p.  47)  remarks  with  justice  that  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer, 
in  his  Psychology,  adopts  the  ordinary  positive  notion  that  the  ego  is 
nothing  but  the  transitory  state  of  the  moment ;  but  in  his  First 
Principles,  though  he  denies  that  a  permanent  subject  can  be  known, 
he  distinctly  asserts  that  it  exists.  Hence  the  hesitations  and  con- 
tradictions in  Mr.  Spencer,  upon  which  M.  Jeanmaire  (L'fdee  de  la 
Personnalitf,  p.  34)  remarks.  It  is  exceedingly  noteworthy,  in 
reference  to  the  argument  of  these  lectures,  that  a  precisely  similar 
inconsistency  is  displayed  by  Mr.  Spencer  on  the  subject  of  religion 
to  that  which  these  writers  note  in  reference  to  human  personality. 
In  the  First  Principles,  religion  appears  as  the  persistent  conscious- 
ness of  a  Power  underlying  what  is  seen  ;  but  in  the  Sociology 
religion  is  persistently  ascribed  to  positive  and  experienced  facts, 
either  real  or  imaginary,  as  tribal  chieftaincy,  ghosts  and  the  like. 


62  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

and  another  appearance  has  been  imaged  and 
has  permanently  displaced  the  first  in  your 
mind.  Now,  is  this  the  case  with  that  "  something 
more"  than  the  aggregate  of  feelings  and  ideas 
which  we  suppose  to  exist,  and  which  Mr.  Spencer 
pronounces  to  be  illusion  ?  On  the  contrary,  it 
obstinately  remains  with  all  its  mystery,  and 
refuses  to  allow  any  idea,  however  clear,  to  displace 
it.  Indeed  even  upon  the  ground  of  clearness 
Mr.  Spencer's  theory  has  little  to  boast.  When 
I  feel,  what,  according  to  him,  is  that  which  feels  ? 
Is  it  the  actual  present  or  nascent  feeling  itself? 
That  is  contrary  to  the  very  form  of  the  expres- 
sion "  I  feel,"  and  turns  it  into  a  meaningless  propo- 
sition. Is  it  the  other  feelings  of  which  the  man 
is  capable,  but  which  are  not  then  present  ?  That 
cannot  be,  because  they  are  not  present.  The 
supposed  illusion  will  not  give  way,  and  every  one 
would  confess  that  to  substitute  for  the  words  "  I 
feel"  the  words  "the  aggregate  of  my  feelings  and 
ideas,  actual  and  nascent,  feels "  would  be  quite 
out  of  the  question.  Even  for  the  sake  of  making 
things  clear  we  are  obliged  to  believe  in  a  mystery 
within  ourselves. 

20.  But    we    can     well    understand    why    Mr. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  63 

Spencer  makes  this  contention.  It  is  because  no 
other  sense  of  the  word  "  I  "  than  that  of  an  ag- 
gregate of  thoughts  and  feelings  is  andtheobjecdve 
known  to  physical  science  or  to  the  "Teon^e 
faculty  of  understanding  by  which  known  to  science' 
science  works.1  Only  on  condition  of  coming  into 
the  sequence  of  physical  causation  can  the  self  be 
subjected  to  scientific  thought.  And  if  scientific 
thought  be  our  only  and  sufficient  source  of  know- 
ledge, the  mysterious  sense  of  the  word  "self" 
must  be  got  rid  of.  Yet  it  maintains  its  ground, 
and  requires  acknowledgment  as  a  prior  con- 
dition of  that  .conscious  life  which  wre  must  have 
in  order  to  know  anything.  Science  has  no  right  to 
enter  upon  any  of  its  possessions  without  first  pay- 
ing this  homage  to  mystery,  and  making  confession 
that  although  it  claims  to  extend  its  domain  over 
all  nature,  yet  the  self  which  can  say  "  I  know " 
is  beyond  nature  and  therefore  beyond  science. 
Accordingly,  if  the  knowledge  of  physiology  were 
ever  so  to  extend  as  that  we  should  know  that  the 
most  elementary  act  of  thinking  is  represented  by 
and  inseparably  connected  with  a  physical  change 

1  See  Leighton's  definition  of  the  understanding:  "The  faculty 
judging  according  to  sense." — Coleridge's  Aids  to  Reflection,  vol.  i. 
p.  163(1843). 


64  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

in  the  brain,  and  this  change  were  proved  to  have 
as  necessary  a  connection  with  other  physical 
circumstances  preceding  as  the  rolling  of  a  billiard 
ball  has  with  the  stroke  of  the  cue ;  if  all  human 
life  inward  and  outward  were  proved  to  be  natural 
and  contained  in  nature,  and  all  nature  were  shown 
to  be  inevitably  bound  together  in  a  chain  of 
physical  causation — all  this  would  never  go  any 
way  towards  proving  that  this  mysterious  "  I 
myself"  did  not  exist  outside  the  system.  It 
would  be  a  mystery  certainly,  though  not  a 
greater  mystery  then  than  it  is  in  the  present 
condition  of  our  knowledge.  But  though  a 
mystery  it  would  be  a  fact,  the  recognition  of 
which  we  could  no  more  avoid  than  we  can  leap 
off  our  own  shadow. 

21.  If    it    be    acknowledged    that    there   is   a 

mysterious   or    unembodied    sense,    as   well   as   a 

But  the        palpable    or   embodied    sense    of  our 

mysterious  sub- 
jective self  is      self,     a     question     of    very    great     im- 

that  which  we 

have  in  daily  use.  portance  is  presented  to  us.  Which 
of  these  two  senses  is  that  which  is  in  daily 
use  for  the  commerce  of  life  ?  It  is  true  indeed 
that  the  two  senses  of  the  word  are  actually 
mingled  together,  so  that  the  embodied  sense 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  65 


is  never  used  so  purely  as  not  to  have  some- 
thing of  the  mysterious  in  it,  and  the  mysterious 
can  never  come  into  life  or  thought  without  the 
embodied.  But  which  side  of  the  ego,  the  known 
or  the  unknown,  is  that  which  we  practically 
present  to  ourselves  and  to  other  people  as  life 
proceeds  ?  It  might  be,  that  while  a  mystery  had 
to  be  acknowledged  in  the  matter  this  mystery 
should  lie  so  far  away  from  human  life  that  we 
should  never  need  to  think  of  it.  Everything, 
as  Mr.  Spencer  so  well  shows  us,  runs  up  into 
mystery  if  you  examine  it  closely  enough  ;  the 
very  notion  of  a  steam-engine  runs  up  into  mystery 
in  several  directions.  But  the  steam-engine  is 
practically  quite  well  known  to  us.  We  know 
how  to  work  it,  and  could  not  know  this  better 
were  there  no  mystery  behind  it  at  all.  And  so 
of  all  the  rest  of  nature.  It  has  a  known  side,  and 
our  business  is  to  make  it  turn  this  known  side 
towards  us.  And  if  this  work  were  complete  our 
practical  relation  to  nature  would  be  complete. 
The  consideration  of  the  mysterious  side  of  nature 
is  only  for  the  poet,  and  multitudes  of  men  live 
their  lives  through  without  ever  thinking  of  it. 
But  we  have  to  answer  our  question  by 


66  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

acknowledging  that  whatever  be  the  case  in  nature 
it  is  not  merely  in  this  fashion  that  the  unknowable 
and  mysterious  within  our  own  personality  presents 
itself.  It  is  the  known  and  palpable  that  is  outside 
of  our  practical  selves.  The  true  active  self,  which 
in  every  feeling  is  the  subject,  that  is  to  say,  the 
power  to  feel,  and  in  every  act  is  the  power  to 
work — this  is  the  mysterious  self.  It  is  the  one 
indivisible  "I  myself"  which  abides  through  all 
changes,  and  not  the  composite  self  made  up  of 
an  infinite  number  of  organs,  which  is  the  self  of 
the  commerce  of  life.  Of  this  we  speak  when  we 
say  "I  think"  and  "I  will."  For  though  it  be 
necessary,  as  we  admit  it  to  be,  that  in  the  very 
act  of  coming  out  into  life,  even  so  far  as  to  say 
"  I  think,"  the  unknowable  self  must  entangle 
itself  with  the  powers  of  the  world  and  with 
physical  forces — still  it  appears  as  the  personage, 
and  they  are  but  its  clothing. 

When  the  thought,  the  feeling,  and  the  action 
are  past  and  have  become  matter  of  history,  then 
the  self  which  moved  in  them  is  congealed  into 
a  hard  form  which  the  intellect  quite  grasps  ;  the 
glow  of  action  is  past.  But  when  we  speak  of  the 
immediate  act  as  it  passes  out  from  us,  and  before 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  67 

it  has  gathered  round  itself  the  clothing  of  his- 
tory, then  our  words  struggle  to  express — but 
cannot  fully  express  it  because  it  passes  human 
words — an  incomprehensible  subject  doing  or 
feeling  certain  things  which  in  themselves  are 
comprehensible.  This  is  the  sense  of  the  self 
with  which  we  really  could  not  dispense.  A  man's 
name  might  serve  him  nearly  as  well  as  the  word 
"  I "  for  relating  his  history  past  or  to  come.  But 
in  that  present  which  is  the  really  important  time, 
because  its  moments  as  they  pass  make  up  life  in 
its  living  character,  the  sense  of  the  word  "  I,"  which 
implies  a  great  mystery,  cannot  be  put  out  of 
use.  Can  men,  then,  be  agnostics  as  to  their  own 
being  ?  In  one  sense  they  must  be  agnostics,  for 
they  cannot  understand  themselves.  But  if  the 
word  agnostic  implies  putting  away  from  us  that 
which  we  cannot  understand  as  something  which 
is  unpractical  and  of  which  we  need  not  think, 
then  no  man  can  be  agnostic  as  to  this  mystery 
of  his  own  existence.  He  may  try  to  be  so. 
He  may  turn  away  his  eyes  from  the  mystery 
and  think  only  of  what  he  understands  about 
himself,  but  in  every  moment  of  life  the  incom- 
prehensible nature  of  that  self  which  performs 

F  2 


68  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

the    immediate    practical   work    of    living    bears 
witness  against  him. 

22.  Now  there  is  another  word  in  constant  use 
of  which   a    similar   account   must    be    given    to 
wnich    has    been     rendered    of 


The  win- 

leSToT^      the  Phrase   "I  myself";  namely,  the 
word-  word    "will."      This   word    is    found, 

after  a  very  cursory  examination,  to  be  used 
with  very  various  extensions.  Sometimes  it 
assumes  a  concrete  form  and  denotes  something 
perfectly  comprehensible  to  the  mind,  filling  a 
place  in  the  material  system  of  the  world,  and 
having  a  history  in  the  sequence  of  events  —  as 
when  we  call  a  man's  testamentary  disposition 
his  will.  No  doubt  the  actual  document  is  called 
the  will  only  in  a  figurative  sense  ;  though  here 
we  must  remark  that  it  is  doubtful  whether,  when 
a  man  calls  a  piece  of  inscribed  parchment  his 
will,  he  is  speaking  more  figuratively  than  when 
he  calls  his  body  himself.  However,  when  we 
ask  whether  even  the  dispositions  embodied  in  the 
document  can  be  called  in  a  strict  sense  the  will  of 
the  man,  we  at  once  perceive  that  they  cannot. 
The  action  of  his  will  in  the  matter  has  not  been 
complete  or  free  In  a  large  number  of  cases  the 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  COD.  69 


act  of  making  a  will  at  all  is  that  very  act  which 
would  have  been  most  carefully  avoided  if  his 
will  had  been  free,  for  it  gives  away  to  some  one 
else  possessions  which  had  been  cherished  and 
loved.  But,  besides  this,  the  action  of  will  in 
making  a  will  has  been  limited  by  very  close 
conditions  ;  by  the  amount  of  the  testator's 
property,  which  is  very  probably  less  by  many 
degrees  than  he  would  wish  it  to  be  ;  by  the  nature 
of  those  objects  of  bounty  which  he  knows  or  has 
within  his  reach — possibly  objects  very  different 
from  those  he  would  have  willed  had  willing 
been  of  any  use.  Therefore  we  find  that  what 
is  called  a  man's  will  is  an  extremely  composite 
result,  having  in  it  a  certain  infusion  of  an  element 
proceeding  from  the  man  himself,  but  also  an 
element  of  still  more  striking  proportions,  sternly 
fixed  for  him  and  refusing  to  yield  to  any  exertion 
of  his  will. 

This  unyielding  element  proceeds  from  the 
laws  of  the  world,  and  from  the  facts  of  the  case. 
Let  us  set  it  aside  and  take  the  will  as  it  proceeds 
from  the  man  himself  in  that  sense  of  self  which 
includes  his  whole  physical  organism.  Have  we 
here  pure  will  ?  Does  that  product  of  his  habits, 


70  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

passions,  and  desires,  which  the  man  himself  would 
declare  to  be  his  own  genuine  and  unconstrained 
will,  really  deserve  that  title  ?  Calm  onlookers, 
and  even  he  himself  in  calm  reflection,  can  very 
well  perceive  that  it  is  not  so.  The  laws  of  his 
physical  life,  his  bodily  condition,  the  operation 
of  motives  suggested  by  inevitable  outward  cir- 
cumstances which  he  did  not  create  or  cause — all 
these  things  limit  his  will  and  turn  it  into  particular 
directions  and  give  it  a  character.  And  very  often 
people  perceive  that  the  character  which  circum- 
stances unwilled  by  them  have  imposed  upon  their 
will  is  one  which  had  much  better  not  have  been 
given,  and  which  they  had  rather  change  but 
cannot.  Seeing  how  invariable  and  unbending 
are  the  circumstances  of  life,  and  how  entirely 
they  envelope  both  our  bodies  and  our  minds,  a 
great  many  very  able  writers  have  concluded  that 
they  cover  the  whole ;  in  which  case  what  we  call 
will  is  nothing  but  the  working  of  the  human 
machine.  Spinoza1  is  of  opinion  that  the  stone 
as  it  falls  would,  if  it  were  conscious,  think  itself 
free,  and  with  as  much  justice  as  man ;  for  it 

1  Ep.  62.     See  Pollock's  Spinoza,  p.  208.     Schopenhauer,  Die 
Welt  als  Wille  und  ah  Vorstelttmg>  vol.  i.  p.  150. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  71 

is  doing  that  to  which  its  constitution  leads  it,  and 
no  more  can  be  said  for  him. 

23.  It  is  impossible  to  refute  this  as  matter 
of  theory.  The  physical  circle  runs  from  the  outer 
world  through  the  nervous  system  to 

.  111  i  Determinism  not 

the  brain  and  back  to  the  outer  world    to  be  refuted  as 

.  ,  . .  ...a  theory  ; 

again  ;  the  corresponding  metaphysical 
circle  runs  from  the  outer  world  through  motives  to 
the  mind  and  back  again  to  the  outer  world.  And 
these  circles  are  alike  complete.1  But  it  is  the 
intellect  which  alone  informs  us  of  their  complete- 
ness, and  the  intellect  is  not  the  whole  man  nor 
has  it  any  right  to  pronounce  itself  the  sole 
exponent  of  the  facts  of  his  constitution.  It  has 
no  right  to  regard  the  man  of  whom  it  forms  a 
part  as  a  machine,  nor  even  as  a  machine  pro- 
vided with  a  curious  ineffective  apparatus  of 
self-consciousness  attached  to  it.  Man  is  not 
only  a  thinking  but  a  living  being,  and  whatever 

1  "  Une  raison  decisive  s'oppose  a  ce  quenous  nous  representions 
le  vouloir  d'une  maniere  intelligible  :  c'est  que  le  vouloir,  en  liii- 
meme,  est  1'acte  propre  du  sujet  conscient  en  tant  que  sujet,  de 
sorte  que  faire  abstraction  du  sujet  dans  sa  fonction  subjective  c'est 
supprimer  ce  que  fait  le  fond  et  1'essence  du  vouloir.  Or  c'est  ce  que 
nous  faisons  lorsque  nous  essayons  de  nous  le  representer.  Nous 
cherchons  alors  a  prendre  pour  objet  de  notre  pensee  ce  qui  ne  peut 
quitter  la  situation  de  sujet  sans  cesser  d'exister." — Jeanmaire 
p.  208. 


72  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


is  necessary  for  life  must  appear  in  any  true 
account  of  him.  Now  the  system  of  determinism, 
physical  or  metaphysical,  however  it  may  seem 
true  for  thought,  is  not  true  for  life.  No  in- 
vestigation of  the  human  physiology,  and  no 
argument  upon  the  operation  of  motives,  has  any 
tendency  to  make  us  feel  destitute  of  will  at 
the  moments  of  action  ;  and  those  are  the 
moments  which  in  their  succession  make  up 
life.  Neither  the  past  nor  the  future  form  any 
part  of  real  life.  It  is  only  the  present  that 
can  be  truly  said  to  be  living,  nor  can  life  be 
really  studied  by  any  one  except  the  living  person. 
Even  he  can  do  it  but  imperfectly,  since  the 
living  moment,  as  he  tries  to  grasp  it,  passes  into 
the  dead  past. 

24.  When  we  think  upon  the    necessity  which 

lies   on   us   we    find    ourselves    incapable   of  ever 

but  false  in      seizing  its  relation  to  the  acts  of  life. 

practice.  Writers  speak  of  the  distinction  be- 
tween internal  and  external  necessity,  but  it  will 
be  found  on  reflection  that  the  distinction  is  futile, 
and  that  any  necessity  we  can  represent  in  thought 
must  be  really  external  to  the  act  of  intelligent  life  ; 
the  constraint  which  comes  from  the  make  of  the 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  73 


body  and  the  disposition  of  the  mind  is  as  much 
outside  of  the   living   act    and    as    incommensur- 
able  with    it    as    the    physical    constraint   which 
comes  from   quite  external  circumstances.    There 
is   something  entirely  meaningless  in  saying  that 
an    act    of    will    is    constrained,    since   the   word 
constrained  has  relation  to   a  system  of  thought 
in  which  will  in  its  true  sense   has    no   dwelling 
at    all.      Acknowledge    in    the    fullest   way    the 
power  of  circumstance    over    you.     Acknowledge 
that  physical  law  takes  possession  of  large  por- 
tions of  your  life  which  once  you  were    used  to 
ascribe  to   unfettered  will.     Motives  operate,  and 
your   physical   system   acts    and    is    acted    upon. 
But  you  never  can  trace    either  of  these   powers 
so  far  as  to  see  it  catch  the  will.    Study  as  well 
as  you  can   the    operation    both   of  physical   law 
and    internal    motive.      Weigh   reasons   with   the 
utmost  carefulness,  or  remember  how  they  worked 
upon  you.     Be  careful  to   forget    no    motive,  not 
even  the  motive  which  may  be  furnished  by  the 
wish    to    act    without    a    motive.     Trace    by   the 
help  of  skilful    physiologists    the  whole   physical 
history    of   human    action,    until    it    becomes    to 
you    all    as    plainly    ordered    as    the    course    of 


, 


74  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

events  when  the  sexton,  duly  paid,  pulls  the  rope 
of  the  bell  and  by  regular  consequence  the  sound 
passes  out  of  the  tower.  Still  you  know  that  at 
the  critical  moment  there  came  out  from  the 
centre  of  your  being  an  act  which  you  can  as 
little  fit  as  a  link  in  the  chain  of  causation, 
mental  or  physical,  as  you  can  attach  time  to 
the  hands  of  your  watch.  There  is  something 
in  the  act  of  will  which  refuses  to  be  so  bound. 
And  this  wonderful  power  is  an  intimate  inalien- 
able part  of  human  consciousness  which  experi- 
ences its  action  without  knowing  what  it  is.  It 
is  one  of  the  factors  if  not  the  chief  factor  of  our 
life,  which  would  not  be  our  life  without  will : 
and  it  has  a  right  to  be  recognised  just  as  much 
as  those  other  facts  of  consciousness  on  which 
our  belief  in  causation  depends. 

25.  Perhaps  it  will  be    said    that    the    mystery 
of  will  is  only  the  common    mystery  of   all    ani- 
mate existence,  and  that  the  office  of 

We  cannot 

separate  inteiiu    will    is    but   to   turn    on    the   stream, 

gent  choice  from 

our  conception  of  while  our  physical  circumstances  and 

will. 

our  tendencies  of  character  deter- 
mine the  course  that  it  is  to  run ;  just  as  the 
banks  of  the  mill-race  determine  the  course 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  75 

of  the  water.  But  this  is  not  our  experience. 
We  cannot  divest  our  will  of  some  share  in  de- 
termining the  channel  in  which  our  energies  are 
to  run  and  the  course  they  are  to  take.1  We 
make  bungling  attempts  at  expressing  the  nature 
of  this  action  of  the  will,  and  find  no  better  way 
of  doing  so  than  by  adopting  the  vocabulary  of 
the  external  and  material  system  ;  and  we  call 
it  free.  But  we  need  not  involve  ourselves  in 
the  interminable  controversy  which  that  word 
suggests.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  if  we  must  try 
to  frame  a  complete  and  consistent  system  of 
human  nature  it  will  be  necessary  to  include  in  it 
the  free  will  of  man ;  for  there  is  that  in  the  will 
which  the  intellect  is  incapable  of  expressing 
by  any  word  but  freedom.  It  is  not  subject  to 
external  constraint,  and  no  constraint  of  any 
kind  can  be  conceived  which  is  not  external  to 
the  will.  If  not  to  be  subject  to  constraint  is 
to  be  free,  the  will  is  free  and  carries  its  essen- 
tial freedom  with  it,  however  small  be  its  powers 
of  making  itself  felt  in  the  outer  world.  But 


1  "Jedes  Wollen  ist  ein  Etwas-Wollen."— Peters,  Wille'nswelt, 
p.  126.  See  too  p.  236,  on  Von  Hartmann's  statement  of  the  same 
principle. 


76  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


what  we  ought  rather  to  say  is,  that  outside  of 
any  system — in  a  region  which  the  understand- 
ing cannot  reach — there  dwells  in  each  of  us  a 
power  called  will.  It  is  the  working  power  of 
the  self,  and  like  the  self  it  is  a  mystery  which 
transcends  thought. 

Such  are  the  conditions  and  such  the  contents 
of  our  self-consciousness.  What  we  know  both  of 
ourselves  and  of  our  power  of  work  has  in  it 
a  mystical  element  of  the  utmost  certainty 
as  a  fact,  and  yet  an  insoluble  puzzle  to  the 
understanding.  And  this  mysterious  part  of  us 
is  not  far  away.  It  is,  to  borrow  a  Scripture  ex- 
pression, very  nigh  us  in  our  mouth  and  in  our 
heart.  The  self  which  stands  distinguished  from 
all  material  things,  the  will  which  has  not  yet 
entangled  itself  with  any  of  the  fettering  con- 
ditions of  action,  are  the  self  and  the  will  with 
which  in  our  immediate  life  we  have  to  do. 

26.    But    even    if  this  be  conceded, 

But  is  there  any 

practical  use  in    a   question  may  still  be  raised   as  to 

thinking  of  the 

mystery  of  our    the    practical   necessity   or   usefulness 

nature  ? 

of  thinking  of  the  mystery  within 
ourselves.  It  might  be  the  nearest  thing  to  us, 
and  all  action  might  depend  on  it ;  but  it  still 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  7T 


might  be  a  kind  of  unvarying  element  in  life 
which  nothing  we  can  do  will  make  less  or 
more  ;  like  the  atmosphere,  which  is  indeed  the 
most  powerful  and  indispensable  agency  in  keep- 
ing things  in  their  place,  but  which,  because  it 
is  so  constantly  and  closely  present,  does  not 
practically  require  to  be  thought  of.  We  know, 
it  may  be  said,  that  the  self  within  us  cannot 
stir,  cannot  make  itself  known  even  to  itself 
without  using  the  bodily  and  mental  powers  with 
which  it  stands  in  such  a  strange  and  inexplic- 
able connection  ;  and  these  bodily  and  mental 
powers  form  part  of  the  system  of  nature.  May 
we  not  spend  our  time  better  in  learning  what  we 
can  about  these  indispensable  instruments  of  the 
inner  self,  and  about  the  conditions  under  which 
they  must  be  exercised,  than  in  troubling  our- 
selves about  that  central  mystery  which  must 
ever  remain  a  mystery  to  us  ? 

27.  It    is    indeed    of    immense    importance   to 
acquaint   ourselves   with   the    laws   of 


the  laws  of  our 

our  state  and  life.     It  is  of  the  same  life  which  operate 

independen  tly 

moment   for    us   to   do   so   that   it    is 


for   a   workman    to    know   the    tools   with   which 
he  has  to  labour  and  the  materials  on  which  he 


78  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


has  to  work.  If  we  forget  that  we  are  servants 
to  law,  and  refuse  to  learn  the  terms  of  our  service, 
we  shall  very  speedily  be  called  to  bitter  account 
for  the  omission.  It  is  not  only  in  the  outward 
world,  but  in  the  inward  that  we  find  ourselves 
subjects  and  not  masters.  Our  very  intellect 
itself  works  not  according  to  our  will  but  inde- 
pendently of  it,  and  often  contrary  to  it.  We 
may  mark  alike  in  the  extremes  of  intellectual 
weakness  and  of  intellectual  strength  the  fact 
that  the  intellect  is  but  an  unmanageable  and 
intractable,  although  very  powerful,  instrument 
of  the  inner  self. 

How  often  in  hours  of  weakness  do  the  thoughts 
wander  in  spite  of  the  will  ?  It  is  not  merely  that 
occasional  imaginations  present  themselves,  sug- 
gested by  some  external  object,  the  presence  of 
which  is  quite  independent  of  any  exercise  of  our 
mind  ;  but  trains  of  thought  are  pursued  in  order 
and  sequence,  while  all  the  time  we  had  infinitely 
rather  the  whole  were  banished  from  our  minds. 
,The  mind  seems  to  behave  altogether  like  a  piece 
of  machinery,  working  away  in  spite  of  the  un- 
skilled overseer  who  has  lost  the  secret  of  stopping 
it.  The  humiliation  which  wandering  thoughts 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  79 

inflict  upon  our  conceit  of  self-mastery  is  a 
common  subject  of  complaint.  And  to  represent 
the  fact  in  its  true  proportion  we  must  recognise 
not  only  our  liability  to  distractions  in  our  trains 
of  thought,  but  the  great  insubordination  of  our 
trains  of  thought  themselves  to  the  command  of 
our  will. 

This  species  of  inward  rebellion  may  be  sup- 
posed to  be  felt  most  by  minds  which  are  weak 
or  enervated  through  want  of  discipline.  But 
when  we  turn  to  minds  of  the  totally  opposite 
character,  we  are  no  less  struck  by  the  resemblance 
of  the  mind  to  a  machine  which  does  its  work 
by  self-action  independently  of  the  will.  The 
discoveries,  and  inventions,  and  productions  of 
genius  which  form  the  triumphs  of  human  in- 
tellect are  attained  by  concentrated  thought.  But 
does  the  discoverer  will  that  his  thought  shall 
work  out  his  discovery  ?  That  would  imply  that 
he  knew  beforehand  what  it  was  to  be.  The 
thought  comes  to  him  he  knows  not  whence  or 
how,  according  to  laws  of  the  mind  which  he  did 
not  frame,  and  which  operate  by  no  power  of  his 
will.  This,  however  humbling  to  our  pride  it 
may  be,  is  the  condition  on  which  we  hold  our 


8o  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 


intellects,  and  this  is  all  we  can  know  about  these 

wonderful  instruments  in  possession  of  which  we 

are  placed.     We   ought    to    learn  what    they  are 

capable  of,  to   keep  them  in  good  order,  and  set 

them  in  motion ;  they  will  then  work  of  themselves. 

28.  But  the  only  reason  why  it  should  be  worth 

our   while  to    know   anything   at    all    about   our 

intellects  is  found   in    the  supposition 

but    there  would 

be  no  use  in      that  we  have  some  power  to  command 

learning  them  if 

we  had  no  power  their   operation.     If   they  were  really 

to  guide  them. 

in  every  way  independent  of  our  will 
there  would  be  as  little  practical  use  in  learning 
what  they  can  do  or  how  they  can  be  kept  in  order 
as  the  railway  traveller  finds  in  knowing  the  con- 
struction of  the  engine  by  which  he  is  whirled 
along,  or,  perhaps  we  should  say,  as  the  engine 
finds  for  knowing  its  own  construction.  It  is 
because  we  are  not  only  the  machine  but  also 
owners  and  guides  of  the  machine,  that  it  is- 
necessary  we  should  know  its  laws.  Some  years 
ago  a  clever  physician,  Dr.  Henry  Maudsley, 
published  a  book  of  much  interest  upon  the  power 
of  the  mind  itself  to  prevent  insanity.  He  proved 
how  much  in  madness  is  due  to  physical  causes, 
and  how  preventable  they  are.  He  showed  how 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  81 

many  phenomena  which  appear  to  be  purely 
mental  are  in  truth  material.  But  when  all  was 
said  there  was  one  thing  which  he  had  not  effected. 
He  had  not  brought  into  the  line  of  physical 
sequence  that  power  within  men  to  which  he 
appealed  when  he  called  upon  them  to  observe 
his  rules.  If  he  had  done  so  he  would  have  at 
once  reduced  his  own  work  to  an  absurdity ;  for 
why  should  men  be  asked  either  to  bring  about  or 
to  prevent  that  which  by  the  laws  of  nature  must 
happen  ?  He  proved  that  people  go  mad  through 
physical  causes  just  as  surely  as  a  clock  goes 
wrong  when  its  works  are  allowed  to  rust.  But 
this  becomes  useful  to  know  only  when  we  grant 
that  there  is  an  owner  of  the  instrument  endowed 
with  power  and  responsibility  for  keeping  it  in 
order. 

Very  lately  the  same  author  has  produced  a  work 
entitled  Body  and  Will,  in  which  he  accumulates 
proofs  of  the  dependence  of  the  human  mind  upon 
material  conditions.  But  it  is  impossible  for  him 
to  state  the  terms  of  the  problem  without  intro- 
ducing considerations  inconsistent  with  his  own 
materialism.  For  instance,  in  proving  the  absolute 
dependence  of  the  will  on  motives,  he  reminds  us 

G 


82  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

that  punishments  are  inflicted  upon  law  breakers, 
"  under  the  tacit  implication  that  the  will  is  not 
an  undetermined  power,  but  that  it  may  be  in- 
fluenced  by   motive   to   act  this  way   or  that."1 
Now  to  maintain  that  the  will  "  may  be  influenced 
to  act  this  way  or  that "  is  to  grant  that  the  will 
is  an  undetermined  power.     A  determined  power 
is  one  which  must  act  in  this  way  alone,  and  not 
in  this  way  or  that.     Again,  the  author   inquires 
"  if  a  man  must  patiently  manufacture  himself  to 
habits   of   well-doing  by  the  diligent  practice  of 
doing  well,  and  on  most  occasions  perceives  good 
habits  to  be  a  better  security  of  good  conduct  than 
good  principles,  what  becomes  of  the  opinion  that 
free    will     is    the     foundation     and     fountain    of 
morality  ? " 2     And  he  conceives  that  he  disposes 
of  the  necessity  of  free  will  to  moral  responsibility 
by  suggesting  that  perhaps  "a,  man's  responsibility 
is  not  for  doing  what  he  does,  being  what  he  is, 
but  for  being  what  he  is."     But  if  the  conditions 
of  human  nature  and  the  power  of  habits  stand 
opposed  to  free  will  in  respect  of  particular  acts, 
why  do  they  not  stand  opposed  to   free  will  in 

1  Body  and  Will,  by  Henry  Maudsley,  M.D.,  p.  8. 

2  Ibid.  p.  94. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  83 

respect  of  the  acquisition  of  habits  themselves  ? 
Responsibility  for  being  what  he  is  is  just  the 
same  kind  of  thing  as  responsibility  for  doing 
what  he  does.  "Were  any  man  really  free  he 
would  be  free  from  responsibility  for  his  character, 
which  he  could  not  then  train  and  fashion."  Yes  ; 
but  were  any  man  really  not  free  he  could  not 
train  and  fashion  his  character.  But  in  truth  this 
clever  book  has  for  its  radical  vice  a  forgetfulness 
of  one  "  obvious  reflection  "  which  the  author  him- 
self makes :  "  Everything  which  we  know  is  a 
synthesis  of  subject  and  object."1  Now  it  will 
be  found  that  throughout  the  work  the  subject 
is  systematically  excluded  from  consideration,  and 
the  materials  and  laws  of  that  part  of  the  world 
which  is  the  object  of  our  knowledge  fill  the  whole 
field  of  view.2 

1  Body  and  Will,  by  Henry  Maudsley,  M.D.,  p.  45. 

2  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  reasoning  of  Mr.  Pollock  (Spinoza, 
p.  190-1),  in  which  he  considers  himself  to  have  proved  that  the 
division  of  subject  and  object  is  identical  with  that  of  matter  and 
mind.      These  writers  have  fallen  into  the  error  described   by 
Professor  Ferrier : 

"  The  ego  comes  before  us  along  with  whatever  comes  before  us. 
Hence  we  are  familiar  with  it  to  an  excess.  We  are  absolutely 
surfeited  with  its  presence.  Hence  we  almost  entirely  overlook  it. 
We  attend  to  it  but  little.  That  neglect  is  inevitable.  Its  perpetual 
presence  is  almost  equivalent  to  its  perpetual  absence." — Institutes 
of  Metaphysic,  p.  200. 

G  2 


84  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

29.  Owners  of  machinery  do  indeed  make  fatal 

mistakes     when     they    suppose     that     the     laws 

by  which  their   engines   work  will  be 

Two  common          * 

governed  by  their  wishes ;  and  it  is  a 
similar  and   equally  serious    error   for 

men  to  forset  that  the  laws  of  the 

pendent  of  law.    universe  work  within  their  own  nature 
as  well  as  around  it,  or  to  imagine  that  those  laws 
can  be  induced  to  vary  their  operation  according  to 
the  will  of  man.   And  no  doubt  it  is  an  error  which 
is  habitually  committed.     Men  imbue  those  bodies 
and  minds  which  are  the  instruments  of  life  with 
habits  of  intemperance,  or  sensuality,  or  indolence. 
And  they   promise   themselves   in   despite   of  all 
experience  that  at  some  future  time,  when  they 
please    so    to   do,   they  .will   cast   these  off  in  a 
moment,  and  will  to  be — and  actually  be — all  that 
they  now  perceive  they  ought  to  be.     They  forget 
that  however  free   the  will   may  be   in   itself,  its 
power  to  produce  effects  even  within  the  body  and 
mind  with  which  it  is  immediately  connected  is 
limited  by  the  circumstances  and  conditions  of  the 
case,  the  most  important  of  which  are  found  in  the 
state  of  those  organs  of  body  and  of  mind  with 
which   it   must    needs  work.      They  manufacture 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  85 

for  themselves  conditions  of  body  and  of  circum- 
stances so  sternly  requiring  the  continuance  of 
their  miserable  habits,  that  their  wills  find  the 
difficulty  too  great  ever  to  make  the  effort  which 
at  a  distance  seemed  so  easy  and  so  sure.  This  is 
a  familiar  topic  with  the  moralist — a  warning  often 
repeated  in  vain,  as  the  graves  of  too  many  slaves 
to  their  own  evil  habits  sadly  testify. 

And  yet  when  the  moralist  has  been  dwelling 
as  strongly  as  he  can  upon  the  bondage  which 
closes  upon  those  who  deliver  themselves  over  to 
sin,  his  mind  misgives  him  that  he  is  omitting  an 
opposite  truth  of  even  greater  importance,  namely, 
the  power  of  the  will  to  contend  with  habits,  with 
circumstances,  with  laws,  and  to  overcome.  It  is 
easy  for  the  onlooker  to  say  that  whatever  power 
the  will  exerts  must  come  from  habit,  law,  and 
circumstance  ;  but  that  is  not  the  point  of  view  in 
which  those  who  determine  to  be  free  must  consider 
the  matter.  If  they  think  of  it  thus  their  will  is 
paralysed,  and  they  refuse  to  make  the  effort  of 
which,  could  they  have  brought  themselves  to  it, 
they  were  perfectly  capable.  Dr.  Maudsley  urges 
that  much  of  Saul  the  Jew  goes  into  the  formation 
of  Paul  the  Christian.  We  need  not  deny  it ;  but 


86  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

if  this  argument  displays  to  us  a  Paul  bound  by  all 
his  former  history,  another  view  shows  us  with  as 
great  truth  a  Paul  bound  by  nothing  in  his  former 
history.  And  the  latter  is  the  view  which  it  was 
by  far  the  most  needful  for  Paul  to  take.  And  he 
did  take  it,  for  his  motto  was  "  I  will  not  be  brought 
under  the  power  of  any."  The  power  of  habits  and 
of  circumstances  is  perfectly  well  known  to  us.  It 
gives  us  notice,  however  unwilling  we  be  to  accept 
notice,  of  the  dominion  which  it  is  going  to  exert 
over  us.  But  of  how  much  is  that  energy  capable 
which  issues  from  those  secret  depths  of  our  nature 
of  which  the  causes  and  the  operations  [do  not  lie 
open  to  the  observation  even  of  ourselves.  Even 
against  mighty  odds,  and  with  damaged  and  im- 
perfect faculties  for  its  instruments,  it  is  hard  to 
say  what  this  mysterious  energy  may  not  effect 
if  once  it  puts  itself  forth.  Many  cases  have  been 
known  in  which  all  scientific  calculation  as  to  the 
motives  which  will  guide  a  man,  or  as  to  the 
powers  which  he  can  evolve,  have  been  utterly 
falsified  by  some  reaction  of  his  inward  self  against 
the  captivity  brought  upon  him  by  his  own  very 
acts.  This  is  what  we  call  power  of  will.  We 
must  call  it  by  this  name  and  believe  in  it  if  we 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  87 

wish  to  reap  the  benefit  of  it.  We  must  recognise 
it  as  consisting  not  in  physical  or  intellectual 
qualities,  but  in  energies  that  have  their  source 
beyond  the  reach  of  observation  and  thought. 

30.  The  battle  of  life  resembles  literal  warfare 
in  many  ways;  but  in  nothing  more  than  this, 
that  you  find  some  soldiers  who  gain  Theselfisthe 
their  victories  by  the  excellence  of  ^j^ 
their  weapons,  and  some  whose  sue-  weaP°ns- 
cess  must  be  ascribed  to  their  essential  manli- 
ness ;  while  the  perfect  soldier  combines  both. 
Peculiar  powers  of  intellect  and  peculiar  directions 
of  taste  resemble  weapons  which  the  will  has  at  its 
disposal.  And  as  nations  must  ever  be  trying  to 
improve  their  arms  both  of  assault  and  defence,  and 
must  learn  that  no  courage  will  give  victory  without 
good  weapons,  and  that  no  care  can  be  too  great 
to  be  expended  on  their  manufacture,  so  must 
every  man  determine  to  improve  to  the  utmost  the 
powers  and  opportunities  with  which  he  has  been 
endowed.  Yet  the  weapons  and  the  warrior  are 
very  distinguishable,  and  it  is  in  vain  that  they  are 
improved  if  he  remains  a  coward  ;  perhaps  the 
more  a  coward  because  of  the  attention  which  he 
pays  to  his  arms  and  of  the  grand  show  which 


MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


they  make.  The  illustration  may  seem  inap- 
propriate to  the  case  in  which  the  mental  and 
bodily  powers  which  we  compare  to  weapons,  and 
the  self  and  will  which  we  compare  to  the  warrior, 
alike  lie  within  the  constitution  of  a  man.  We 
grant  the  fact ;  the  mystery  of  human  nature 
consists  in  this.  But  it  is  as  certain  and  as 
practical  a  truth  to  say  that  the  bodily  and 
mental  powers  are  separable  from  the  essential 
man  as  to  say  that  the  weapons  and  the  warrior 
are  different. 

Many  men  are  successful  in  the  world  and  make 
great  conquests  in  the  intellectual  domain  of  whom 
you  can  only  pronounce  that  their  talents  are 
great.  Tasks  are  easy  to  them  which  are  diffi- 
cult or  impossible  to  others.  They  may  be  hard 
workers,  but  they  never  would  have  become  such 
if  delight  in  congenial  and  successful  labour  had 
not  drawn  them  on.  It  is  by  aptitude  and  not  by 
will  that  they  grow  great.  And  just  as  behind  the 
glittering  armour  of  a  mediaeval  knight  a  poor 
creature  enough  might  hide,  so  behind  the  talents 
of  many  a  man  of  fame  there  may  be  an  inner  self 
of  very  inferior  quality.  Though  he  be  as  proud 
of  his  talents  and  think  them  as  truly  his  own  as 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  89 

conceited  persons  think  their  money  or  their 
clothes,  yet,  in  truth,  his  gifts  are  as  separable 
from  his  true  self  as  garments  or  wealth ;  and  he 
has  no  more  right  to  pride  himself  on  them  than 
his  purse-proud  neighbour  has  to  glory  in  his 
inherited  possessions.  Nor  is  this  unfelt  by  other 
men.  Very  often,  persons  never  heard  of  in  the 
great  world,  and  whose  talents  are  slender,  produce 
on  those  who  know  both  well  the  impression  of  a 
larger  being  than  that  of  the  gifted  individual  who 
despises  them. 

31.  Talents  maybe  improved  by  education ;  as 
well  by  the  education  of  early  years  when  wise 
preceptors  watch  and  develop  the  Education  of  the 
bent  of  a  child's  powers,  as  by  that  talentsand 

J  education  of  the 

of  later  times  when  people  undertake  wilL 
their  own  education  and  continue  it  as  the  great 
task  of  their  lives.  But  wise  preceptors  of  youth 
and  wise  self-teachers  are  alike  aware  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  developing  the  talents 
without  developing  the  central  man,  and  dealing 
with  the  mind  without  dealing  with  the  soul. 
When  a  man  has  learnt  this,  neither  fame,  nor 
wealth,  nor  success,  nor  even  that  better  thing  of 
which  fame  and  success  should  be  the  stamp — 


90  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

namely,  matured  power  and  conscious  mental 
strength — will  satisfy  him  so  long  as  he  must 
feel  that  the  self  which  is  nearer  to  him  than 
his  fame  or  even  his  talents,  remains  unperfected. 
And  it  is  not  more  certain  that  the  talents  can 
be  improved  than  that  the  inner  self  may  be 
strengthened. 

How  to  strengthen  it  is  the  question  which  is 
better  worth  asking  and  better  worth  answering 
than  any  other  that  life  can  raise.  It  cannot  be 
answered  in  a  self-satisfied  spirit  or  by  any  who 
refuse  to  recognise  the  mystery  of  life.  Faith  in 
ourselves  is  our  great  need ;  that  faith  which 
dispenses  with  sight  and  is  a  kind  of  religion. 
But  even  talents  need  aid  from  without  to  assist 
their  development,  and  those  who  refuse  to  be 
helped  are  little  likely  to  make  the  best  of  their 
abilities;  and  dependence  is  still  more  plainly 
our  condition  in  the  affairs  of  the  soul.  It  is  a 
mysterious  region.  We  cannot  understand  it. 
It  is  ourselves,  yet  more  than  anything  in  our 
life  it  leads  us  beyond  ourselves.  The  possession 
of  this  mysterious  personality  and  will  makes  us 
powerful  and  independent  of  circumstances  for 
every  task  of  life  to  a  degree  that  we  ourselves 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  91 

cannot  measure.  But  it  also  renders  us  dependent, 
we  cannot  tell  how  far,  upon  those  incompre- 
hensible powers  which  are  akin  to  the  mystery 
within  ourselves.  Where  to  find  such  powers, 
how  to  turn  them  to  our  use,  and  how  to  apply 
the  mysterious  endowments  of  our  own  nature  in 
relation  to  them,  is  the  subject  which  we  have 
next  to  consider. 


III. 

KNOWLEDGE  OF   MEN. 

"  As  in  water  face  answereth  to  face,  so  the  heart  of  man  to  man." 
— PROV.  xxvii.  19. 

32.  WE  are  putting  but  an  imaginary  case  when 

we  suppose  a  man  perfectly  conscious  of  his  own 

nature,  with   its  wants  and  problems, 

The  self  seeks 

help  from  the     looking  out  into  the  world  to  see  what 

outer  world. 

The  mystery  of   help   he   can   there   find   in    his    self- 

the  passage  to  it. 

development.  For,  as  matter  of  fact, 
our  knowledge  of  the  world  and  of  the  help  it  can 
give  begins  at  the  same  time  with  our  knowledge 
of  ourselves,  and  we  become  conscious  by  equal 
steps  of  the  problems  of  the  outward  world  and 
of  those  which  are  found  within.  Still  it  is  pos- 
sible in  thought  to  separate  self  and  the  outer 
world.  When  the  period  of  mature  reflection  has 
come,  our  self-knowledge  ranges  itself  close  to 


MAWS  KNOWLEDGE,  ETC.  93 

us,  and  our  knowledge  of  other  things  and  people 
lies  beyond.  And  it  is  distinctly  a  step  in  advance, 
and  one  which  requires  to  be  well  justified,  when 
from  belief  in  our  own  personality  we  proceed 
forward  to  the  belief  that  any  persons  meet  us 
in  the  region  that  lies  beyond  the  castle  walls 
of  self. 

It  will  evidently  be  unreasonable  that  we 
should  deal  with  the  outward  world  on  principles 
which  have  been  found  inapplicable  to  the  world 
of  self.  One  who  requires  a  kind  of  proof  or 
evidence  in  the  outer  world  which  he  has  to  do 
without  in  the  inward,  resembles  the  feudal  lords 
who  were  sometimes  known  as  lax  and  good- 
natured  in  the  requirements  they  made  of  their 
own  families,  while  they  were  strict  and  cruel 
in  their  demands  upon  their  dependents.  We 
have  seen  that  we  are  incomprehensible  to  our- 
selves. However  much  we  can  understand  about 
our  life  we  cannot  understand  the  central  mystery 
which  constitutes  the  true  self.  Like  a  horse 
trying  to  lick  off  a  fly  which  is  too  near  his 
mouth  to  allow  him  to  touch  it,  we  find  that  the 
part  of  ourselves  which  really  lies  closest  to  us 
is  that  part  which  is  least  comprehensible.  But 


94  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

though  it  is  incomprehensible  we  cannot  put  it 
aside  as  something  of  which  we  need  not  think. 
On  the  contrary,  the  incomprehensible  self  is  that 
which  is  in  constant  use,  and  which  refuses  to  be 
ignored.  And  thus,  if  we  be  wise,  we  go  out  into 
the  world  in  a  humble  frame,  and  ready  to  accept 
truth  which  is  forced  on  us  by  practical  experience 
or  irresistible  feeling  without  being  able  to  under- 
stand it. 

And  indeed  we  cannot  make  a  single  step  out  of 
our  own  door  without  finding  occasion  to  exercise 
this  temper.  The  very  passage  to  the  outward 
world  is  itself  full  of  mystery  and  question.  How 
can  we  know  that  anything  is  without,  when  we 
plainly  know  only  by  means  which  are  within  our 
frame  ?  Like  Rebecca  in  the  story  describing  to  the 
disabled  knight  what  she  sees  out  of  the  window, 
so  our  senses  inform  our  mind  of  what  they  find 
beyond.  But  the  mind  cannot  accept  their  infor- 
mation without  great  misgivings.  It  feels  that  the 
senses  have  no  powers  capable  of  explaining  the 
nature  of  the  things  of  which  they  tell.  How  shall 
it  assure  itself  that  there  is  anything  at  all  out- 
side corresponding  to  what  they  report  ?  And  yet 
on  the  other  hand  it  seems  impossible  to  imagine 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  95 

in  ourselves  a  power  of  seeing  and  hearing  that 
which  appears  to  be  real,  and  at  the  same  time 
a  power  of  looking  behind  the  mirror  and  finding 
out  that  what  seemed  to  be  real  is  not  real  at  all. 
In  the  long  run  the  existence  of  a  world  is  a 
mystery  which  must  be  accepted  but  accepted 
without  being  understood. 

33.  Let  us  suppose  this  first  great  difficulty 
surmounted,  and  that  we  are  well  out  into  the 
open,  with  the  firm  ground  of  a  Mystery  of 
known  world  under  our  feet.  We  ^  Jj££j 
by  no  means  find  that  the  accept-  ofintellisence- 
ance  of  one  great  mystery  at  the  bidding  of  in- 
stinct has  completed  the  humiliations  to  which 
the  understanding  must  submit,  or  the  list  of 
occasions  on  which  it  must  hand  over  the  office 
of  guide  to  humbler  faculties.  Why  the  particles 
of  which  the  material  world  is  composed  came 
together  to  form  it,  and  why  coming  together  they 
still  do  not  cease  to  be  separable  particles  ;  how 
forces  act  and  how  motion  is  produced — what 
have  we  to  say  in  answer  to  these  questions  but 
"  I  cannot  tell "  ?  And  yet  the  cohesion  and  the 
separability  of  atoms  is  part  of  the  necessary 
knowledge  we  have  of  the  world.  We  cannot 


96  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

dispense  with  the  fact  that  this  is  the  character 
of  matter.  Neither  can  we  understand  it.  It  is 
a  mystery  which  we  are  forced  to  recognise  and 
use.  We  cannot  ignore  it ;  but  we  can  very  easily 
forget  that  it  is  a  mystery,  and  complacently 
imagine  that  because  it  is  familiar  it  is  also 
understood. 

When  living  creatures  come  under  our  notice 
we  receive  in  addition  to  the  wide  enlargement 
of  our  interests  and  the  helps  of  life  which  they 
bring  to  us,  a  large  accession  also  to  the  stock  of 
truth  which  we  must  receive  but  cannot  under- 
stand. What  is  life,  and  how  does  it  arise  ?  What 
is  sensation — that  strange  phenomenon  which  we 
observe  in  living  creatures,  and  upon  which  their 
interest  and  use  for  us  so  entirely  depends  ?  Even 
if  we  could  understand  the  impact  of  one  body  on 
another,  and  how  they  come  together  and  yet 
remain  separate,  we  should  still  be  unable  to 
understand  how  in  the  case  of  living  beings  there 
is  not  merely  an  impact  but  an  impression.  There 
is  a  certain  kind  of  effect  or  result  to  the  living 
creature  from  the  presence  of  an  external  object, 
wholly  different  from  what  would  have  followed 
had  the  creature  not  been  alive.  There  is  an 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  97 

indescribable  and  incomprehensible  something 
within  the  living  being  that  receives  the  external 
presence  in  a  way  in  which  dead  matter  could  not 
have  received  it,  and  adds  to  the  material  results 
of  the  meeting  a  phenomenon  quite  beyond  our 
understanding,  which  we  call  sensation. 

But  when  from  inanimate  things  and  from  the 
lower  creatures  we  pass  on  to  men  we  find  our- 
selves in  the  presence  of  accumulated  wonders. 
Even  were  we  able  to  understand  sensation  in 
itself,  how  shall  we  understand  the  process  by 
which  sensations  are  taken  in,  and  so  connected 
and  distinguished,  and  manipulated  by  something 
within,  which  men  call  their  mind,  as  to  turn  them 
into  knowledge?1  The  experience  of  sensations  no 
more  accounts  for  knowledge  than  a  field  of  corn 
accounts  for  a  loaf  of  bread.  The  materials  of 
knowledge  we  see  given  from  without :  nothing  is 

1  "All  the  data  of  sense  could  give  me  no  idea  of  objects,  nay, 
could  not  even  enable  me  to  attain  to  that  unity  of  consciousness 
which  is  necessary  for  the  knowledge  of  myself  as  an  object  of  inner 
sense  ...  It  is  true,  that  if  I  make  myself  in  thought  a  pure 
animal,  I  can  conceive  these  sensible  ideas  as  carrying  on  their 
regular  play  in  my  soul,  seeing  that  they  might  still  be  bound 
together  by  an  empirical  law  of  association,  and  so  have  influence 
on  feeling  and  desire  ...  but  then  I  should  not  through  these 
ideas  have  knowledge  of  anything,  even  of  my  own  state."— Kant, 
quoted  by  Caird  (Philosophy  of  Kant,  p.  266). 

H 


\ 


98  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

in  the  intellect  which  was  not  first  in  the  sense. 
We  are  well  aware  that  if  shut  in  from  contact 
with  the  external  world  the  mind  of  man  could  no 
more  think  or  know  than  a  mill  could  move  with- 
out wind  or  grind  without  corn.     But  the  wonder 
is  that  though  the  dependence  of  man  upon  the 
outward  world  for  his  mental  stores  appears  so 
complete,  yet  what  comes  forth  from  him  as  know- 
ledge of  the  outward  world  is  a  great  deal  more 
than  that  which  we  have  seen  the  outward  world 
bring  to  him.     In  the  process  of  passing  through 
the  mind   sensations  are  wonderfully  transmuted 
by  powers,  within  which   work  with   all   possible 
regularity  and  decision,  and  which  constitute  the 
very  basis  of  man's  mental    life.     And  yet  they 
are  extremely  mysterious.     Watch  a  child  which 
is  making  its  first  acquaintance  with  the  world  of 
things.    You  will  see  that  the  process  is  not  like  the 
introduction  of  furniture  into  an  uninhabited  house, 
where  the  place  for  everything  has  to  be  chosen 
and  things  might  as  well  be  put  in  one  part  as 
in  another.     Rather  it  resembles  the  furnishing  of 
a  house  which  is  made  so  ready  for  the  process 
that  everything  as  it  comes  is  caught  up  by  active 
servants  and  set  in  a  place  assigned  and  adapted 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  99 

for  it  among  surroundings  already  provided,  and 
which  make  it  look  quite  different  from  the 
article  which  was  delivered  at  the  door. 

To  what  degree  the  preparation  which  is  some- 
how in  the  mind  already,  though  latent  and 
unawakened,  mingles  with  even  the  most  elemen- 
tary perceptions  that  come  to  us  from  the  outside 
world,  it  is  very  hard  to  say.  These  original 
possessions  of  the  mind  itself  are  precisely  those 
which  it  is  most  difficult  for  the  mind  to  dis- 
engage and  to  describe.  We  cannot  be  sure  that 
any  sensation  whatever,  even  in  its  most  elementary 
form,  is  the  same  thing  to  men  which  it  is  to  the 
inferior  creatures.  But  great  metaphysical  subtlety 
and  close  thinking  are  required  to  analyse  the 
common  every-day  facts  of  our  intercourse  with 
the  outside  world,  and  to  show  how  much  in  the 
impressions  which  they  produce  and  in  the  message 
which  they  deliver  to  us  is  due  to  outward  things 
themselves,  and  how  much  to  the  powers  of  the 
intellect  and  to  general  conceptions  and  habits 
of  working  either  involved  in  the  very  essence  of 
the  mind  or  inherited  in  some  strange  way  from 
previous  generations.  It  has  been  shown  to  the 
conviction  of  a  great  number  of  thinkers  that  the 

H  2 


ioo  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

framing  in  place  and  time  without  which  no  picture 
of  the  outer  world  can  ever  find  a  place  in  our 
conception  is  not  furnished  from  without,  but  after 
the  entrance  of  the  originating  sensation  into  the 
mind.  But  what  are  these  conceptions  of  space 
and  time  without  which  we  can  have  no  ideas  of 
anything,  yet  which  no  external  object  brings 
into  our  minds  ?  And  what  are  we  to  call  that 
power  of  the  mind  which  possesses  them  ?  We 
cannot  tell :  things  can  only  be  known  as  in  space 
and  time,  but  space  and  time  can  only  be  known 
in  connection  with  things.  Nor  do  we  know  the 
mysterious  power  of  the  mind  from  which  they 
come  except  in  its  power  of  connecting  and 
arranging  the  stores  contributed  by  the  senses. 
Mysterious  though  the  power  be,  yet  there  is  no 
doubt  that  if  we  did  not  possess  it  our  perceptions 
would  hang  loose  and  unconnected  and  quite 
unworthy  of  the  name  of  knowledge. 

34.  Mathematical   science    affords   an   example 
which  is  evident  to  us  all,  of  something  added  by 

Mystery  of         a       mysteri°US      pOWCr     within      tO      the 

experience  which  comes  through  our 
intercourse  with  the  outside  world.  The  mind 
is  plainly  not  independent  of  sensible  experience 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  101 

even  with  respect  to  mathematical  science.  That 
is  to  say,  a  mind,  if  such  were  imaginable,  cut 
off  from  all  sensation  and  all  contact  with  what 
lies  without,  could  never  have  conceived  from 
stores  of  its  own  the  notions  of  numbers  or  of 
figures.  It  could  never  have  counted  one,  two, 
three,  or  imaged  a  line,  a  circle,  or  a  square.  But 
in  so  far  as  counting  things  that  are  before  the  eyes 
or  before  the  imagination  —  in  so  far  as  acquir- 
ing by  experience  the  ideas  of  shapes  and  forms 
and  retaining  the  notions  thus  acquired  in  the 
memory,  there  seems  nothing  peculiarly  strange : 
and  the  understanding  is  able  to  follow  the  pro- 
cess, though  with  the  same  incompleteness  that  it 
it  finds  in  all  its  experience.  But  in  all  matters  of 
pure  experience  the  understanding  strictly  forbids 
us  to  imagine  that  our  experience  is  necessarily 
common  to  all  minds.  It  tells  us  that  to  derive 
universal  or  necessary  notions  from  our  experience 
is  the  very  mark  of  childishness  or  savagery,  and  is 
the  greatest  possible  contradiction  of  experience 
itself,  which  constantly  shows  us  how  narrow  and 
imperfect  our  experience  is.  And  though  when 
our  experience  happens  to  be  confirmed  by  that  of 
a  great  many  other  persons  in  a  large  number  of 


102  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

instances,  and  with  none  to  the  contrary,  we  at  last 
arrive  at  the  conviction  that  we  have  reached  what 
we  call  a  law  of  nature,  yet  we  can  never  feel  sure 
by  mere  observation  that  this  law  of  nature  obtains 
throughout  the  universe,  nor  even  if  we  did,  could 
we  know  that  it  not  only  is  but  must  be  so.  It  is 
part  of  the  uniform  course  of  nature  that  fire 
burns.  But  can  any  one  lay  down  as  a  fact  that 
fire  burns  everywhere  throughout  the  universe  ? 
Even  if  you  were  in  a  position  to  do  this,  can 
you  be  sure  that  fire  not  only  does  but  must  burn, 
and  that  it  could  not  do  otherwise  in  any  place  or 
circumstances  whatever  ?  We  cannot  say  so.  But 
when  we  arrive  at  a  mathematical  truth  this  is 
the  very  thing  that  we  do  say.  A  conviction 
that  it  is  universally  true  and  cannot  under  any 
circumstances  be  otherwise  accompanies  our  very 
perception  of  it.  And  thus  we  have  a  kind  of  know- 
ledge which  springs  out  of  experience  and  yet 
bears  a  fruit  entirely  beyond  experience.  In  the 
course  of  its  development  it  disengages  itself  from 
the  material  facts  in  which  it  had  its  beginning: 
it  rules  experience,  and  not  experience  it.  Its 
definitions  express  something  which  never  was 
and  never  will  be  exactly  embodied  in  matter,  for 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  103 

they  are  too  exact  for  coarse  material  bodies  to 
exemplify.  No  experiments  in  the  material  world 
are  needed  to  prove  its  principles.  But  they  are 
supreme  over  matter  and  thought  alike.  And  we 
are  incapable  of  conceiving  or  of  believing  in  the 
existence  of  any  mind  or  any  world  for  which 
they  shall  not  be  valid. 

Consider,  then,  our  progress  in  knowledge.  In 
our  very  first  experience  of  an  external  world  we 
find  not  merely  that  there  is  much  we  do  not 
know,  but  that  in  the  very  centre  of  what  we  do 
know  there  is  a  mysterious  element,  a  certain  and 
indispensable  truth  which  is  as  incomprehensible 
as  it  is  certain.  When  we  proceed  further  to 
consider  the  phenomena  of  sensation,  we  find 
other  facts  which  are  equally  certain  yet  as 
impossible  to  be  understood.  When  we  think 
of  human  beings  and  their  acquisition  of  know- 
ledge we  find  powers  developed  in  them  which 
no  previous  facts  suffice  to  account  for  :  mysterious 
powers,  yet  undoubtedly  real.  And  when  we 
observe  the  human  mind  reaching  to  necessary 
truth  and  knowing  not  merely  what  is,  but 
what  must  be,  we  reach  a .  further  stage  in 
that  progress  by  which  knowledge  of  the  most 


io4  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

certain   kind   springs    and    grows    up    we    know 
not   how. 

35.  It   is    hardly    possible    for    any    one    who 

considers   this  progress    in    knowledge    and    the 

We  must  be  in     nature  of  it  to  avoid  the  conclusion 

centact  with  a 

source  of  know-   that    along   with    the   outward  world 

ledge  beyond  the  t 

sensible  world,    and  through  it  we  are  all  in  contact 

The  perception 

of  beauty.  with  a  source  of  thoughts  and  con- 
victions which  lies  beyond  the  world,  and  which 
the  understanding,  capable  as  it  is  only  of  dealing 
with  the  sequence  of  earthly  facts,  cannot  compre- 
hend. When  we  say  that  an  unknowable  element 
enters  into  all  knowledge,  we  assert  a  truth, 
but  not  the  whole  truth.  The  point  is  that  this 
unknowable  is  not  wholly  unknowable.  It  enters 
into  our  knowledge  and  makes  part  of  it.  It 
assumes  various  forms  to  us,  and  there  is  a 
progress  in  what  it  teaches. 

We  are  only  proceeding  forward  on  the  same 
lines  when  we  trace  the  operation  of  a  teaching 
which  comes  from  beyond  the  senses  in  our  ideas 
of  beauty  and  of  right  as  we  have  found  it  in 
our  ideas  of  truth.  So  varied  is  this  unknowable 
in  its  form  that  it  meets  us  everywhere  and  in 
every  kind  of  knowledge,  whether  it  be  of  that 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  105 

kind  which  is  definite  or  that  which  is  felt  more 
than  stated  :  for  as  Goethe  says,  "  It  is  not  always 
necessary  that  truth  must  be  incorporated.  It  is 
sometimes  enough  if  it  hovers  around  us  and 
brings  us  into  harmony  with  itself:  if,  like  the 
sound  of  bells  with  solemn  friendly  tone,  it  lingers 
in  the  air/' 

Those  who  have  felt  most  deeply  the  sense  of 
beauty,  and  thought  most  deeply  upon  its  nature, 
have  recognised  this  spiritual  character  in  it. 
What  is  it  that  speaks  to  the  mind  in  art  and  in 
nature  ?  If  a  primrose  by  a  river's  brim  be  to  a 
man  a  yellow  primrose  and  nothing  more,  the 
poet  tells  us  that  such  a  man  does  not  feel  its 
beauty.  And  yet  what  is  the  yellow  primrose 
more  than  a  yellow  primrose  ?  Neither  the  senses 
nor  yet  the  understanding  can  tell  what.  "  A 
spirit  far  more  deeply  interfused"  mingles  with 
all  nature  and  communicates  to  us  a  message  of 
beauty  which  refuses  to  be  weighed  and  measured 
by  the  intellect,  and  vanishes  if  the  intellect  presses 
its  questions  too  far.  Not  but  what  this  beauty  is 
of  the  nature  of  truth.  Truth  in  art  is  the  first 
requisite  of  beauty :  and  the  beauty  of  nature, 
from  which  that  of  art  is  derived,  has  ever  in  it  a 


io6  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

something  which  we  feel  to  be  allied  to  truth. 
We  regard  it  as  a  reproof  to  anything  false  or 
wicked  in  ourselves,  and  it  seems  to  us  far  more 
excusable  that  men  should  be  evil  in  the  midst 
of  the  ugliness  of  great  cities  than  among  beautiful 
scenes  of  nature.  There  is  a  strict  connexion 
between  beauty  and  truth,  and  the  principles  of 
beauty  can  even  be  in  some  degree  reduced  to 
rules  which  may  be  studied  and  found  useful  in  the 
comprehension  or  production  of  what  is  beautiful. 
But  the  basis  of  beauty  lies  beyond  all  rules,  and 
cannot  be  understood. 

36.  And  the  same  character  belongs  to  our 
moral  being.  In  the  history  of  the  development  of 
The  perception  conscience  there  is  no  doubt  that  much 
of  right'  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  influence  of 
social  laws.  But  when  all  has  been  granted  that 
can  be  proved — one  had  almost  said  that  can  be 
asked — by  the  extremest  advocates  of  evolution  in 
morals,  something  remains  behind.  Even  if  we 
traced  all  morality  to  the  growth  of  social  laws, 
yet  in  that  original  capacity  of  human  nature  for 
social  intercourse  which  gives  their  power  to  such 
laws,  we  must  acknowledge  something  for  which 
materialism  does  not  account ;  in  other  words,  an 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  107 

infusion  of  the  supernatural.  And  however  much 
we  attribute  to  development  we  must  recognise 
that  original  infusion  of  the  supernatural  as 
accompanying  the  whole  process  ;  and  we  can- 
not separate  the  power  of  conscience  from 
connexion  with  it.  Whoever  recognises  in 
conscience  only  social  law  in  the  earthly  aspect 
of  law,  rejects  its  most  commanding  part.  We 
need  no  more  deny  the  power  which  the  progress 
of  human  history  and  experience  has  had  upon 
the  development  of  moral,  than  that  which  they 
have  had  upon  mathematical,  science.  But  in  the 
one  case  as  in  the  other,  the  earthly  history  is 
made  the  channel  of  a  power  which  is  more  than 
earthly.  Conscience  speaks  to  us  not  merely 
with  the  sanction  of  expediency  proved  through 
past  generations,  but  also  with  a  mysterious  force 
which  invests  the  duties  imposed  by  earthly 
circumstances  with  an  authority  that  earth  could 
never  have  given. 

Such  is  our  mental  wealth,  and  so  it  flows 
in  upon  us.  If  we  determine  that  we  can 
know  nothing  except  that  which  we  can  fully 
understand,  we  shall  have  to  reject  not  merely 
the  highest  and  noblest  but  even  the  surest, 


io8  MAWS  KNO  WLEDGE 

thoughts  and  feelings  of  which  our  minds  are 
capable.  But  indeed  what  is  mysterious  in  our 
knowledge  is  but  the  natural  counterpart  of  the 
mystery  that  is  in  ourselves.  When  we  have 
apprehended  how  certain  it  is  that  each  of  us 
is  a  separate  self,  and  yet  how  incomprehensible 
it  is  that  we  should  be  anything  more  than  a  part 
of  nature,  we  are  prepared  for  those  intimations 
of  truths  and  realities  beyond  nature  which  reach 
us  in  spite  of  our  bondage  to  the  senses,  as 
glimpses  of  the  sky  might  reach  a  prisoner 
between  the  walls  which  confine  him. 

37.  This  being  our  case  in  respect  to  our 
knowledge  of  ourselves  and  our  knowledge  of  the 
HOW  then  do  we  world  of  things,  we  cannot  approach 

know  other  men?    ^  question  Qf  Qur  knowledge  of  Other 

men  with  the  determination  to  recognise  in  them 
nothing  but  what  we  can  perceive  with  the  senses 
and  understand  with  the  intellect. 

It  is  certain  indeed  that  but  for  our  sensible 
experience  we  should  be  quite  unaware  of  the 
existence  of  any  other  men  in  the  world.  Other 
men  reach  us  through  our  sight,  our  hearing,  our 
touch  ;  and  one  deprived  of  these  senses  would 
be  deprived  of  their  company.  We  have  under- 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  109 

standings  which  combine  and  reduce  to  system 
the  messages  which  our  senses  convey,  and  they 
deal  with  those  experiences  which  bring  us  in 
contact  with  men  as  they  do  with  all  other 
experiences.  Men  appear  as  combinations  of 
phenomena  as  much  as  stones  and  trees.  The 
phenomena  combined  in  them  are  more  numerous 
and  complicated,  and  are  perhaps  more  widely 
varied  in  different  cases  than  those  of  stones  and 
trees  ;  but  the  essential  point  is  the  same,  that 
men  appear  to  us  as  combinations  of  phenomena. 
And  as  curiosity  and  the  desire  to  turn  our  obser- 
vations to  profit  prompt  us  to  learn  the  order 
in  which  phenomena  in  other  combinations  ap- 
pear and  disappear ;  so  we  are  prompted  in  like 
manner  to  make  systematic  observations  with 
regard  to  human  beings  and  to  combine  them 
into  scientific  rules  of  action. 

38.  A   very   large   and   important  part   of  our 
conduct     towards     men     is     framed       Much  of  our 

knowledge  of 

upon  the   principle  of  attending  the    men  comes  from 

.  sensible 

phenomena  of  human  life  and  com-       observation. 
bining    our    observations.      Children    are   reared 
and  trained  as   plants   are   watered   and   tended. 
Similar  treatment  is  expected  to  produce  similar 


1 10  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

effects  upon  the  children  as  upon  the  plants. 
Great  national  measures  of  education  and  civili- 
sation are  expected  to  yield  their  proper  re- 
turns, just  as  great  measures  of  drainage  and 
cultivation.  Nay,  so  closely  are  the  worlds  of 
nature  and  of  man  connected,  that  the  very 
processes  of  draining  and  clearing  tracts  of  land 
are  themselves  looked  to  as  sure  to  yield  results 
equally  definite  and  natural  in  the  men  who 
inhabit  the  country  as  in  the  plants  that  grow  there. 
Nor  will  it  be  only  in  the  physical  part  of  man's 
constitution  that  these  consequences  will  flow.  The 
phenomena  of  his  mental  and  even  his  moral  life 
may  be  studied,  and  the  conditions  on  which  they 
rest  discovered.  And  the  sciences  thus  framed 
have  proved  full  of  fruitfulness.  Physiology  studies 
the  nature  of  the  individual  man,  and  sociology 
that  of  man  in  society  ;  and  though  both  these 
sciences  be  very  complicated  and  difficult  there  is 
no  doubt  that  they  are  thoroughly  well  founded. 
Jn  all  this  there  is  no  mystery  except  the  mystery 
which  underlies  all  things  alike  :  no  special  mystery 
in  man  different  in  kind  from  that  which  we  notice 
in  the  lower  creatures  and  in  the  vegetable  world. 
There  is  a  considerable  difference  in  degree  both 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  1 1 1 

in  the  number  of  observations  required  and  in  the 
wonder  and  interest  of  the  pursuit.  Yet  it  is  only  a 
difference  in  degree.  Natural  history  is  a  fascinat- 
ing subject.  Both  plants  and  animals  of  the  lower 
kinds  awaken  affection  ;  and  the  study  of  man- 
kind might  be  granted  to  be  only  the  highest  kind 
of  natural  history  without  thereby  proving  it  im- 
possible to  feel  both  an  interest  in  the  science  and 
love  for  the  subjects  of  it  equal  to  the  splendid 
results  which  we  derive]  from  its  pursuit. 

39.  But  is  this  all  ?  If  it  be  all,  then  other  men 
are  not  as  we.  For  in  ourselves,  besides  the 
unvarying  and  unbroken  series  of  phy-  But  the  know- 

.       .  ,        .  ,      .          ,         .       .        ledge  of  their 

sical  causes  producing  their  physical    personality  can- 

not  come  from 

effects,  there  is  a  mysterious  power  that  source. 
which  is  not  our  body  nor  our  intellects,  nor  any 
of  the  phenomena  of  these,  nor  any  part  of  us 
that  we  can  understand,  but  ourselves.  Though 
we  recognise  in  our  own  life  a  natural  history,  a 
physical  series  as  closely  linked  as  any  that  we 
can  see  going  on  anywhere  around  us,  yet  in  us 
this  is  not  all ;  it  is  not  the  chief  thing,  the  reason 
why  we  are  ourselves.  It  is  the  mystery  be- 
hind, that  enables  us  to  say  "  I  myself,"  and  that 
is  the  ground  of  our  self-consciousness ;  and  this 


1 1 2  MAN'S  KNO  W LEDGE 

alone  enables  us  to  call  our  faculties  our  own,  in- 
stead of  observing  them  as  a  part  of  the  machinery 
of  nature  at  large. 

Are  we  then  to  say  that  it  is  we  ourselves  alone 
who  possess  this  personality  ?  Is  each  one  to 
himself  the  only  person  in  the  universe,  recog- 
nising in  his  own  case  that  I  myself  which  is  not 
a  combination  of  his  faculties  but  the  owner  of 
them  all,  but  able  to  discern  in  other  men  nothing 
but  faculties,  or  perhaps  we  should  rather  say 
nothing  but  a  series  of  natural  causes  producing 
their  natural  effects  ? 

This  would  be  a  position  of  things  very  different 
from  that  which  ordinary  language  and  men's 
common  way  of  thinking  assume.  For  in  their 
language  and  thought  the  sharpest  distinction  is 
made  between  persons  and  things,  and  we  are 
supposed  to  be  conversant  with  both  in  our  daily 
life.  A  system  which  should  regard  all  other 
human  beings  as  mere  series  of  phenomena  would 
place  them  in  the  kingdom  of  things,  not  of  per- 
sons, and  out  of  that  kind  of  correspondence  with 
ourselves  which  we  call  personal.  On  this  sup- 
position the  distinction  in  kind  between  things 
living  and  things  dead  seems  to  vanish,  and  the 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  1 1 3 

one  appears  the  subject  of  outward  influences  not 
less  completely  than  the  other.  The  distinction  in 
kind  between  consciousness  and  unconsciousness 
loses  its  significance  ;  for  consciousness  is  on  this 
supposition  nothing  but  an  impotent  witness  of 
a  series  of  events  which  proceeds  without  allowing 
it  any  right  of  interference. 

*  40.  Now  there  is,  as  we  have  already  allowed,  a 
great  deal  to  be  said  in  support  of  such  a  system. 
There  is  no  doubt  whatever  that  very  The  knowlejge 
large  departments  of  human  life  as  «£^ 
we  observe  it  in  our  fellow-men  fall  natural  history' 
necessarily  into  nature,  and  present  themselves  as 
part  of  the  invariable  and  unchangeable  series 
of  physical  causation.  What  part  of  man  as 
we  observe  him  can  be  excepted  from  physical 
causation  ?  Not  his  body ;  for  that  falls  under 
the  operation  of  physical  law  just  as  much  as 
any  other  mass  of  matter  in  the  system  of  nature. 
Nor  yet  his  mind.  The  intellect  cannot  be  ex- 
empted from  the  operation  of  law  any  more 
than  the  body,  which  in  all  its  changes  is  so 
plainly  subject  to  it.  We  have  found  this  to 
be  the  case  with  our  own  bodies  and  minds, 
which  work  often  without  our  will,  sometimes  in 

I 


ii4  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

spite  of  our  will,  and  always  by  powers  which 
our  will  can  only  influence  but  never  originate  ; 
and  the  same  is  the  case  with  others.  In  our 
case  we  found  no  refuge  from  the  conclusion  that 
self  and  will  are  words  which  express  no  meaning 
at  all,  or  a  delusive  one,  except  in  our  conscious- 
ness that  self  and  will  are  realities  —  a  conscious- 
ness which  has  palpable  outward  effects  in  human 
action,  and  is  implied  in  our  feelings  and  our 
language  with  a  strength  which  is  able  to  maintain 
itself  against  any  arguments.  Arguments  must  ad- 
dress themselves  to  the  powers  of  the  human  mind, 
and  there  is  no  power  in  the  human  mind  which 
more  essentially  belongs  to  it  than  the  conscious- 
ness of  will  and  of  self.  The  way  is  barred  against 
any  argument  tending  to  overthrow  this  conscious- 
ness, for  sheer  want  of  any  tribunal  within  us  whose 
determinations  have  any  greater  validity  than  the 
consciousness  in  question  possesses. 

We  cannot  have  ^     HoWCVCr,     thlS     COnSCioUSnCSS    IS 

the  conscious- 

mouOi^of     ^7  its  very  nature  incapable  of  being 
other  men  which   communicated  to   anybody   else   with 

we  have  of  our 


own.     Are  we       ^e    same    forcQ   ^y^h    ft    pOSSCSSCS    for 
then  the  only 


of  its  owner.     Men  have  it 
of  themselves  but  they  cannot   have  it   of  other 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  115 

men.1  When  we  have  catalogued  the  palpable  and 
cognisable  facts  of  other  men's  constitution  :  the 
powers,  bodily  and  mental,  of  which  facts  have 
proved  them  to  be  possessed  :  the  tendencies 
which  experience  has  shown  in  them,  and  the 
necessities  which  their  surroundings  impose,  we 
have  said  all  that  our  minds  can  directly  know 
about  them.  They  tell  us,  indeed,  that  they  also 
like  ourselves,  feel  that  there  is  something  more  ; 
they  believe  themselves  endowed  with  free  will  and 
with  personality.  But  we  cannot  be  sure  from 
any  observed  facts  that  this  is  not  a  delusion  on 
their  part.  Although  we  find  it  plainly  worth 
our  while  to  humour  them  in  this  notion,  and  to 
deal  with  them  as  if  they  possessed  this  free  will 
which  they  claim,  yet  we  know  that  there  are 
many  other  notions  which  pass  for  true  in  the 
intercourse  of  society  without  being  genuine  facts. 

1  "  When  I  look  at  another  man  I  do  not  perceive  his  conscious- 
ness. 1  see  only  a  compound  body  of  a  certain  form  or  colour 
moving  in  this  or  that  manner.  I  do  not  immediately  know  that 
he  perceives,  feels,  and  thinks,  as  I  do  myself.  He  may  be  an 
exquisitely  formed  puppet,  requiring  perhaps  more  mechanical  skill 
in  the  construction  than  ever  has  been  attained  by  man,  but  still  a 
mere  machine.  When  I  attribute  to  him  personality  and  conscious- 
ness, I  mediately  and  reflectively  transfer  to  another  that  of  which 
I  am  directly  cognisant  only  in  myself. "— Mansel,  Prolegomena 
Logica,  p.  140. 

I    2 


1 1 6  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

And,  indeed,  we  constantly  detect  an  undeniable 
mixture  of  delusion  in  men's  persuasion  that  they 
possess  a  free  self.  We  find  them  habitually  over- 
rating the  power  which  their  will  possesses  over 
their  physical  nature.  They  think  that  they  will 
do  so  or  so :  but  we  who  have  calmly  considered 
their  organism,  and  estimated  the  future  results  to 
which  their  past  tends,  foresee  with  confidence  that 
they  will  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  And  we,  not 
they,  turn  out  in  a  great  many  cases  to  be  right. 
We  ask  ourselves,  what  if  this  were  the  whole 
account  of  the  matter  ;  and  if  their  supposition 
that  they  are  individual  selves  and  possess  wills 
were  total  delusion  ?  And  we  must  reply  that  in 
that  case  the  last  sign  of  any  external  personality 
goes  down  beneath  the  current  of  natural  law, 
and  we  look  forth  upon  the  unbroken  and  cease- 
less flow  of  things,  ourselves  the  only  persons  in 
existence. 

Whatever  evidences  of  personality  in  mankind 
may  be  urged  in  answer  to  this  conclusion,  will 
be  found  as  imperfect  in  their  own  way  as 
evidences  of  the  being  of  God  or  of  the  truth  of 
Christianity  have  ever  been  in  theirs.  The  utmost 
that  such  treatises  can  effect  in  their  sphere  is  to 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  117 

produce  a  probability ;  to  adduce  facts  which  are 
most  reasonably  accounted  for  on  the  supposition 
of  the  truth  in  question  ;    to   remove  objections, 
and  make  the  way  of  belief  intellectually  open  to 
those  whose  instincts  lead  them  to  believe.     But 
there  must  ever  remain  ways  of  escape  from  belief 
for  those  who   have   not   the   instinct    of   belief. 
The  facts  may  always  be  possibly  accounted  for 
on  another  hypothesis.      And  if  the  mind  comes 
to   the   examination   prejudiced  in  favour  of  the 
contrary  hypothesis,  the   facts  fall  naturally   into 
their  place   under  it.      Thus  it  is  with  the  hypo- 
thesis of  human  personality.     When  we  argue  the 
question  with  ourselves  whether  the  men  around 
us  are  really  persons,  or  whether  they  are  the  mere 
productions   of  circumstances   and    the   action  of 
material  forces,  we  are   not  able  to  advance  any 
arguments   convincing   to   our  intellects  why  the 
former  theory  should  be  accepted  rather  than  the 
latter.     All  we  can  prove  is  that,  from  some  points 
of  view,  things  look  strangely  like  their  person- 
ality ;  that   if  they  have  not  genuine   will,  mate- 
rial forces   have   assumed  forms   wonderfully  like 
to    genuine  will.      But    material   forces    in   their 
numberless   complications   are    doubtless   capable 


1 1 8  MAN'S  KNO  W LEDGE 

of  assuming  very  strange  forms,  and  this  may  be 
one  of  them. 

42.  We   must  bring  to  the  aid  of  the  lagging 

arguments  for  human  personality  the  recognition 

of  an  instinct  or  a  feeling  which  draws 

There  must  be 

an  instinct  in  us    us  towards  other  persons,  and  knows 

for  recognising 

persons  as       them    as    such.     Of  this    instinct   no 

mysterious  as 

our  personality    account  can  be  given  to  the  mind  ;  it 

L  itself. 

can  but  recognise  the  fact  that  we 
possess  the  instinct.  We  have  already  seen  in  how 
many  departments  of  thought  and  feeling  we  appear 
possessed  of  powers  which  work  inevitably,  but 
of  the  working  of  which  the  mind  can  give  no 
explanation.  In  mathematics,  aesthetics,  morals, 
the  highest  and  best  part  of  every  conviction  is 
found  in  a  super-sensible  element  which  the  in- 
tellect accepts  and  registers,  but  of  which  it  can 
furnish  no  account  to  itself.  And  why  should  not 
the  same  be  the  case  in  man's  knowledge  of  man  ? 
There  seems  nothing  wonderful  in  asserting  that 
while  man  can  understand  a  great  deal  about  his 
brother  man,  the  highest  and  best  part  of  that 
brother,  his  personality,  is  something  which  is  given 
to  him  as  a  datum  which  his  mind  is  to  accept, 
and  not  as  an  acquisition  of  the  mind.  He  cannot 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  119 

refuse  to  accept  it,  but  it  declines  to  be  made  an 
object  of  his  science. 

43.  In  the  departments  of  mathematics,  aesthe- 
tics, and  morals  alike,  there  is  a  great  difference 
in  the  use  which  different  men  make 

Different  men 

of  the  principles   which  are   given  to     have  different 

degrees  of  belief 

their  minds.     We  cannot  believe  that  in  the  personality 

of  other  men. 

there  are  any  men  absolutely  destitute 
of  all  feeling  of  the  truth  on  which  these  sciences 
are  founded.  They  would  be  less  than  men  if 
they  were.  But  it  is  certain  that  different  men 
give  very  different  degrees  of  supremacy  within 
them  to  the  truth  or  the  beauty  or  the  righteous- 
ness which  they  must  perceive  in  some  degree, 
even  though  dimly  ;  and  that  they  work  it  out  in 
practice  with  very  different  degrees  of  complete- 
ness. So  that  to  some  men  the  spiritual  and  eternal 
element  would  seem  almost  to  vanish  out  of  all 
these  departments,  and  nothing  to  remain  but 
combinations  of  earthly  ideas;  while  to  others 
earthly  facts  seem  only  starting-places  and  occa- 
sions of  very  little  account  in  themselves  for  the 
introduction  of  thoughts  and  feelings  that  pass 
altogether  beyond  earthly  expression.  And  so 
it  seems  to  be  with  man's  knowledge  of  man 


120  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

Personality  in  our  brother  man  is  not  a  fact  which 
is  recognised  equally  and  of  course  by  all  men. 
There  are  some  who  both  profess  to  believe  in  it 
and  act  up  to  the  profession :  and  some  whose 
recognition  of  it  in  practice  is  far  less  real  than 
that  which  they  pretend  to.  And  there  may  be 
others  so  far  led  by  the  arguments  against  human 
personality  as  to  deny  it  in  theory,  but  whose 
practical  recognition  of  it,  in  spite,  as  it  were,  of 
themselves,  is  very  strong  indeed.  And  last  and 
lowest  of  all,  there  are  many  men  who  scarcely 
even  profess  to  regard  their  brother  men  as  differ- 
ing in  any  essential  point  from  the  inanimate 
world,  and  who  practically  treat  them  altogether 
as  things. 

The  temper  which  produces  the  latter  state  of 
mind  is  rightly  called  selfishness.  A  man  realises 
intensely  his  own  self.  He  tries  to  forget  or  to 
ignore  whatever  in  the  conditions  of  his  life 
refuses  to  be  subject  to  self.  Self  is  the  centre 
from  which  everything  radiates.  With  such  dis- 
positions it  is  impossible  for  him  to  make  that 
instinctive  transfer  of  self  into  other  men  which 
enables  us  to  realise  them  as  possessed  of  the  same 
personality  that  we  have.  They  are  confounded 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  121 

with  the  rest  of  the  objects  which  surround  the 
man  and  are  to  him  simply  part  of  that  which 
is  not  himself.  And  the  object  which  he  sets 
before  him  is  to  make  everything  else  the 
instrument  of  self  and  subject  to  its  will.  There 
is,  it  is  well  known,  a  very  possible  and  even 
common  condition  of  mind  which  regards  all 
human  beings  as  mere  tools  and  ministers  of 
selfishness.  And  it  is  also  a  fact,  admitted  and 
experienced,  that  whoever  treats  other  men  in  this 
way  will  degrade  instead  of  elevating  that  self  of 
his  own  to  which  he  sacrifices  them.  He  loses  the 
exercise  of  his  own  personality  by  ignoring  theirs. 
He  destroys,  by  refusing  them  the  place  of  equal 
companions  to  himself,  the  appointed  means  by 
which  his  sense  of  his  own  freedom  should  be 
stimulated  and  developed.  And  by  a  paradox, 
strange  and  yet  most  certain,  those  who  care  most 
for  self  are  those  in  whom  self  becomes  thoroughly 
subjected  and  enslaved  to  external  influences.  "  He 
that  saveth  his  life  shall  lose  it,  and  he  that  loseth 
his  life  for  my  sake,  the  same  shall  save  it."  So 
said  the  Son  of  Man :  and  it  is  in  accordance 
with  the  whole  spirit  of  His  teaching  that  what 
He  savs  of  our  relations  to  Himself  should  in  a 


1 22  MAWS  KNO  WLEDGE 

degree  be  true  of  those  we  hold  to  every  human 
being  about  us,  and  of  our  general  connexion  with 
the  whole  human  race.  By  losing  ourselves  in 
them  we  find  ourselves :  by  intensely  realising 
other  men's  personality  we  come  to  a  sense  of 
our  own. 

Even  where  there  is  nothing  which  we  can- call 
absolute  selfishness  there  is  a  certain  apathy  to- 
wards the  personality  of  our  fellow  men,  which 
fails  to  realise  what  they  are  and  what  they  may 
be  to  us.  And  this  also  reacts  upon  our  sense  of 
our  own  personality,  and  makes  it  indolent  and 
even  dead.  But  what  seems  more  strange  is  that 
there  are  even  ways  of  doing  men  good  and  of 
practising  what  we  imagine  to  be  love  to  them, 
which  nevertheless  regard  them  merely  as  things 
and  passive  subjects  of  physical  law,  missing  all 
true  hold  upon  their  personality.  It  is  not  every 
kind  of  interest  in  mankind,  or  every  kind  of  love 
to  them,  which  is  personal  interest  and  love.  A 
plant  is  more  interesting  than  a  stone,  and  a  beast 
than  a  plant,  but  all  are  things,  and  we  do  not 
regard  any  of  them  as  persons.  It  is  common  for 
men  to  describe  their  feeling  towards  inanimate 
things  or  towards  the  lower  animals  as  love,  and 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  123 

there  is,  as  we  have  before  remarked,  much  in  the 
feeling  which  deserves  that  name.  It  is  easy  to 
see,  therefore,  that  there  may  be  a  feeling  towards 
mankind  which  may  be  called  interest  or  even 
love,  yet  which  does  not  truly  regard  them  as 
persons,  and  differs  only ,  in  ^degree,  but  not  in 
kind,  from  that  which  is  experienced  towards 
the  world  of  things. 

44.  And  this  seems  to  be  a  way  of  dealing  with 
mankind  which  is  peculiarly  prevalent  in  these 
times.  The  scientific  spirit  of  the  age  Menmaybe 
leads  most  thinkers  to  dwell  upon  that 
part  of  man's  constitution  by  which 
he  is  in  the  system  of  nature  than  on  thems°od- 
that  part  by  which  he  stands  above  nature.  In 
this  point  of  view  man's  relationship  to  the  other 
phenomena  of  the  world  can  be  laid  down  in  a 
plausible  manner,  and  his  development  can  be 
made  matter  of  science.  His  history  can  be  re- 
presented as  ruled  by  laws  equally  invariable  with 
those  which  govern  the  life  of  plants  and  that  of 
beasts.  Many  strange  phenomena,  it  is  true,  pre- 
sent themselves  in  the  history  of  man  testifying  in 
a  way  which  partakes  of  the  nature  of  miracle  to  the 
presence  in  every  life  of  an  element  which  cannot 


124  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

be  clearly  brought  under  physical  law,  and  which 
seems  to  bear  witness  to  free  will.  But  it  is  found 
possible  to  pass  such  symptoms  by.  They  may 
be  ascribed  to  the  difficulties  of  the  subject  and  the 
complicated  way  in  which  laws  operate.  And  so 
in  the  view  of  many  men  mystery  disappears 
from  human  nature,  and  physical  law  everywhere 
prevails. 

While  science  is  thus  busy  on  the  one  side  in 
reducing  man  to  a  part  of  nature,  it  is  occupied  on 
another  in  discoveries  which  tend  to  benefit  his 
condition.  They  are  discoveries  of  laws  in  the 
physical  world,  unknown  before.  It  is  because 
they  are  not  occasional  phenomena,  but  constantly 
recurring  operations  of  law,  that  it  is  so  good  to 
learn  them.  If  it  was  not  known  that  they  can  be 
thoroughly  depended  on  not  to  fail  there  would  be 
little  use  in  knowing  them  ;  but  because  they  are 
unvarying  laws  man  can  bring  them  systematically 
into  the  service  of  his  life,  or  his  life  into  relations 
with  them.  These  discoveries  of  physical  law  are 
useful  to  man  only  because  he  himself  in  part  of 
his  constitution  belongs  to  the  same  department. 
He  himself  has  powers,  and  wants,  and  desires,  as 
regularly  recurring  and  as  well  deserving  the  title 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  125 

of  laws  of  nature  as  those  physical  phenomena  by 
which  they  are  helped  and  supplied.  He  must  be 
a  part  of  nature  in  order  to  derive  benefit  from  his 
knowledge  of  natural  laws.  And  a  part  of  it  he 
undoubtedly  is,  in  a  degree  sufficient  to  enable  him 
to  respond  constantly  and  invariably  to  improve- 
ments in  the  bearing  upon  him  of  the  laws  of 
external  things. 

When  these  discoveries  in  the  regions  of  external 
nature  are  proceeding  with  energy  and  with 
brilliant  results,  and  are  found  to  yield  fruit  for 
the  benefit  of  human  life,  while  at  the  same  time 
physical  laws  in  the  region  of  man's  internal 
nature  and  history  are  searched  out  and  pro- 
claimed, it  is  no  wonder  that  he  should  sometimes 

forget  that  there  is  anything  but  physical  law  in 

/ 

the  world  around  him  or  in  his  own  nature  with- 
in. This  is  the  more  likely  when  the  exclusive 
attention  to  such  a  law  comes  as  a  reaction 
from  a  condition  of  thought  bearing  the  contrary 
character.  In  past  times  nature  was  thought  to 
be  governed,  if  not  capriciously,  yet  by  laws 
which  admitted  of  constantly  recurring  exceptions. 
And  an  extravagant  power  in  producing  these  ex- 
ceptions— a  power  quite  beyond  what  experience 


1 26  MAN  'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

justifies — was  ascribed  to  the  human  will,  working 
by  various  methods,  magical  or  otherwise.  Then 
the  chief  known  way  of  making  men  better  and 
happier  was  by  direct  action  on  the  human  will. 
The  attempt  to  improve  the  condition  of  large 
masses  of  mankind  by  removing  physical  impedi- 
ments which  lie  in  their  way  was  not  thought  of. 
It  was  considered  that  if  you  could  work  upon 
man's  own  will  he  would  be  able  to  effect  great 
things  in  overcoming  natural  disadvantages,  and 
that  even  if  he  overcame  none  of  them  yet  this 
would  matter  little  if  his  own  self  reached  its  full 
development.  Too  little  was  known  about  the 
laws  of  nature  and  of  human  life  to  direct  men's 
attention  to  those  quarters,  and  man  was  dealt 
with  in  himself  or  left  alone. 

45.  When  we  look  back  upon  those  old  days 
with  all  their  defects,  their  ignorance 

The  present  age 

in  more  danger    of   the   conditions   of    life,   and   their 

of  losing  the 

recognition  of    neglect  of  improvement  in  its  surround- 

personality  than 

simpler  times     ings,  we  cannot  but  sometimes  feel  that 

were. 

man  as  such  was  more  to  himself  and 
to  his  brother  man  when  nature  was  less.  Even 
men  who  have  themselves  little  spiritual  belief  have 
been  struck  by  the  tendency  in  modern  life  to 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  127 

reduce  all  people  to  the  same  model  and  abolish 
all  true  freedom  of  will  and  all  individuality  of 
character.  But  indeed  how  should  men  not  be 
all  of  the  same  model,  and  why  should  they  desire 
to  be  anything  else  if  there  be  none  but  physical 
laws  to  govern  them,  and  if  those  laws  be  always 
the  same  ?  We  look  with  admiration  upon  dis- 
coveries which  place  mighty  agencies  of  nature 
at  the  disposal  of  all  men.  We  regard  with 
sympathy  attempts  to  abolish  unnatural  distinc- 
tions between  man  and  man,  and  to  spread  to  all 
men  those  benefits  of  nature  which  seem  to 
belong  as  generally  to  all  as  the  sun  and  the  air. 
But  as  the  benefits  which  scientific  discoveries 
confer  and  those  which  flow  from  a  scientific 
treatment  of  human  life  grow  greater,  men  seem 
to  lose  the  prophetic  power  of  appeal  to  the 
central  being  of  their  brethren.  All  these  great 
discoveries  concern  themselves  not  with  men,  but 
with  things,  or  with  men  considered  as  things.  They 
do  not  touch  men  as  men.  And  the  exclusive 
pursuit  of  them  assimilates  men  to  things.  A 
vast  and  complicated  system  of  nature  is 
developed  in  our  minds ;  it  seems  to  include 
our  brethren  in  it ;  but  it  hides  their  real  selves 


1 28  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

from  us.  A  barrier  rises  between  them  and  us 
like  that  which  separates  us  from  the  world  of 
the  lower  animals. 

Men  let  go  the  secret  of  coming  heart  to  heart 
with  one  another  when  they  think  exclusively  of 
the  laws  of  nature.  For  these  place  us  in  no 
more  real  sympathy  or  brotherhood  with  man 
than  with  any  other  portion  of  that  vast  system 
of  machinery  of  which  all  alike  are  parts.  To 
appeal  to  man's  secret  nature,  to  approach  him 
closely,  to  influence  him,  to  love  him  in  the  truly 
human  sense  of  that  word,  we  must  remember 
that  mystical  bond  of  personality  which  exists 
between  him  and  us.  Of  this  nature  tells  us 
nothing  :  but  our  own  consciousness  and  the  instincts 
which  accompany  consciousness  tell  us  much. 

46.  We   must   not  omit    to  learn  the  physical 

laws  which  govern  our  own  external  lives  and  those 

of  our  brethren.      They  are  the  con- 

We  must  know 

the  laws  which    ditions  under  which  we  live.      If  we 

govern  other 

men's  lives.  But  neglect  them,  we  neglect  not  only  the 

we  must  cultivate  . 

faith  in  them  as    opportunity   of  improvements   in  our 

external  well-being,  but  also  our  true 

self-development.      Man    learns   to   know   himself 

and  finds  his  opportunities  of  self-improvement  in 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  129 

his  friendly  contests  with  nature,  where  com- 
mand can  only  be  achieved  on  the  condition  of 
absolute  obedience.  We  shall  do  little  good 
either  to  ourselves  or  to  other  men  by  ignoring 
the  physical  laws  among  which  we  are  set  to 
live.  If  we  are  able  to  discover  anything  in  nature 
ever  so  small  which  was  not  known  before,  or 
even  to  persuade  men  to  better  submission  towards 
those  natural  laws  which  though  known  are  not 
obeyed,  we  shall  be  benefactors  to  mankind, 
and  superiority  of  knowledge  and  of  service  to 
human  life  will  earn  the  gratitude  of  men.  Yet 
when  all  this  is  done  we  may  have  acquired 
nothing  of  that  which  is  properly  called  influence, 
the  mysterious  power  which  flows  from  person 
to  person.  We  may  be  unable  to  teach  any  one 
how  to  make  any  of  the  discoveries  we  have 
revealed  serviceable  for  the  true  elevation  of  self, 
which  after  all  is  the  real  man.  And  we  and 
they  together  may  resemble  the  ambitious  seeker 
after  a  kingdom  who  lodges  himself  in  a  palace 
and  clothes  himself  in  purple  only  to  find  that 
in  the  midst  of  all  he  is  unhealthy,  old,  and 
shrunken,  and  that  his  grand  surroundings  do 
him  little  good.  We  have  forgotten  those 

K 


1 30    MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE  OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD. 


personal  relations  to  each  other  which  cannot 
be  maintained  without  acknowledging  a  mystery  : 
that  mysterious  recognition  of  self  in  others  which 
corresponds  to  the  mysterious  self  within. 

Man's  recognition  of  the  personality  of  his 
fellow  is  a  faith.  It  is  in  itself  a  kind  of  religion. 
We  have  to  overpass  sight  in  order  to  gain  it. 
It  is  something  which  cannot  be  proved.  But  it 
is  that  on  which  depends  all  that  is  noblest  and 
happiest  in  human  life. 


IV. 

WE   KNOW  GOD   THROUGH   SELF-KNOWLEDGE. 

"  Man's  goings  are  of  the  Lord  ;  how  can  a  man  then  understand 
his  own  way  ?  .  .  .  The  spirit  of  man  is  the  candle  of  the  Lord, 
searching  all  the  innermost  parts  of  the  belly." — PROV.  xx.  24,  27. 

47.  THAT  which  makes  ourselves  to  be  ourselves, 
that  which  wills  and  acts  in  us,  escapes  our  thought 
and  baffles  our  powers  of  statement  Themyste7of 
and  description.  We  cannot  define  it ;  ^^[L 
yet  we  cannot  put  it  aside  as  something 
which  does  not  concern  us,  except  at  the  price 
of  putting  aside  all  life  and  action.  It  would  be 
incorrect  to  suppose  that  this  conviction  is  some- 
thing which  requires  to  be  proved,  or  of  which 
there  can  be  any  doubt.  On  the  contrary,  it 
is  an  obstinate  and  persistent  fact  of  life  which 
science  has  spent  itself  in  arguing  against  for  ages, 
now  in  this  direction,  now  in  that,  but  which 

K  2 


1 32  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


no  amount  of  arguing  has  set  aside,  even  for  a 
moment.  Men  may  indeed  forget  it,  or  hide 
it  from  themselves  behind  a  mass  of  outward 
and  visible  facts  which  they  observe  and  accumu- 
late. But  their  whole  system  wants  the  breath 
of  life,  and  when  they  open  the  valves  through 
which  the  breath  of  life  is  admitted  into  the 
frame  of  man's  mind  and  body,  mystery  comes 
in  with  it ;  mystery  constitutes  its  very  nature. 

When  we  extend  our  view  to  our  fellow  men 
we  find  that  personality  in  them  can  only  be 
recognised  on  the  condition  that  we  are  willing  to 
accept  a  mystery.  So  long  as  they  remain  only 
things  to  us,  so  long  we  perceive  no  special 
mystery  about  them.  But  if  we  want  to  live 
with  them  as  with  persons,  we  can  do  so  only 
by  recognising  in  our  own  mysterious  souls  an 
instinctive  power  to  discern  other  souls.  Inter- 
course between  men  may  be  degraded  far  below 
this,  into  something  merely  of  the  same  kind 
as  the  intercourse  which  man  holds  with  the 
world.  But  the  highest  and  best  intercourse 
can  only  be  founded  on  the  faith  which  is  willing 
to  accept  a  mystery  ;  and  this  is  implicitly  felt 
and  acknowledged  by  all  who  have  experience  of 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  133 


the  highest  and  best  communion  with  other  men. 
Every  word  we  speak  to  a  fellow  man  as  to  a  being 
like  ourselves  is  addressed  to  a  mystery  as  truly 
as  is  prayer  to  God. 

The  belief  in  mystery  is  thus  a  practical 
necessity  for  man  in  his  own  life  and  in  his  in- 
tercourse with  his  fellows.  Mystery  is  the  word 
which  seems  best  to  express  the  facts  of  the 
case.  The  word  denotes  something  known  with 
the  utmost  certainty  as  a  fact,  but  which  cannot 
be  understood  in  its  causes,  nor  woven  into  a 
system  with  the  facts  which  surround  it.  So  long 
as  a  phenomenon  can  be  ascribed  to  possible 
deception  or  mistake  we  do  not  speak  of  mystery, 
for  deception  and  mistake  are  not  mysterious  but 
perfectly  well  known  agencies.  But  when  facts 
present  themselves,  and  we  become  convinced  that 
deception  and  mistake  are  words  improper  to  be 
used  of  them,  and  they  refuse,  from  any  point 
of  view,  to  disappear,  we  then  pronounce  that 
they  are  mysterious.  And  this  is  just  the  state 
of  the  case  in  respect  of  our  own  personality 
and  that  of  other  men.  Mystery  being  thus 
admitted  as  a  constituent  ingredient  in  human 
life,  and  the  faith  which  accepts  and  acts  on 


134  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


mystery  being  recognised  as  demanded  of  us 
all  by  the  common  necessities  of  living,  it  is 
natural  to  ask  whether  the  principle  can  be 
confined  in  its  operation  to  human  personalities, 
or  whether  the  gap  which  is  left  open  in  the 
neatly-smoothed  circuit  of  human  science  for 
the  purpose  of  admitting  this  mystery  is  not 
large  enough  to  admit  other  mysteries  too. 

48.  When  the  city  of  Syracuse  was  besieged  by 

the  Athenians  and  the  Spartans  determined  to  send 

Science  and      reh'ef,  it  was  believed  by  most  in  Greece 

mystery.  that  ^  ^^    ^    ^    ^    saye    ^    ^^ 

It  was  thought  that  all  that  could  now  be  done  was 
to  hover  round  the  city  and  transport  any  stragglers 
who  might  escape,  to  some  other  settlements, 
where  they  might  console  themselves  as  they  could 
for  the  loss  of  their  homes.  For  the  impression 
prevailed  that  the  Athenians,  a  people  extremely 
well  skilled  in  sieges,  had  drawn  their  lines  so 
completely  round  the  place  that  no  communication 
was  any  longer  possible  between  the  garrison  and 
their  friends  outside.  But  when  the  relieving  force 
came  close  enough  to  know  the  exact  condition  of 
things  it  was  found  that  this  was  not  the  case. 
Although  the  lines  had  been  drawn  closely  round 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  135 


the  larger  portion  of  the  town,  yet  one  point 
remained  which  was  still  open.  And  through  this 
little  vacant  space  came  the  aid  from  without 
which  in  the  end  turned  the  hopes  of  the  besiegers 
to  defeat. 

The  city  in  this  parable,  as  in  Bunyan's  Holy 
War,  represents  man's  soul.  The  communication 
between  the  city  and  its  friends  outside  is  Religion, 
which  consists  in  intercourse  between  man 
and  a  supernatural  God :  if  this  intercourse  be 
impossible,  then  whatever  delights  man  may  find 
within  his  own  nature,  or  whatever  peace  and 
friendship  he  may  establish  between  himself  and 
the  power  which  shuts  him  off  from  God,  he  cannot 
have  any  of  those  comforts  or  aids  which  can 
properly  be  called  religious.  The  power  which 
shuts  him  in  is  physical  science,  which  has  been 
drawing  its  lines  so  closely  round  man's  life  that 
contact  with  what  lies  beyond  nature  seems  to 
some  no  longer  possible  for  man.  We  all  know 
how  long  the  siege  has  been  progressing.  Its 
commencement  goes  back  as  far  in  history  as 
human  thought  can  reach.  From  the  very  be- 
ginning it  was  known  that  man  had  to  do  not 
merely  with  God,  but  with  nature.  But  the  sphere 


1 36  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

in  which  he  had  to  do  with  God  seemed  very  large, 
and  the  restraints  and  difficulties  which  nature 
opposed  to  communication  with  God  seemed  far 
off  and  comprehended  but  a  small  portion  of  life. 
The  whole  world  of  thought,  of  will,  and  of  re- 
ligion was  untouched  by  material  laws  and  free 
for  intercourse  with  God.  How  differently  we 
feel  now.  We  have  seen  the  lines  drawn  closer 
and  closer.  Many  parts  of  human  action  which 
once  seemed  the  pure  product  of  choice  are  now 
declared  to  be  the  undoubted  result  of  man's 
physical  conditions.  His  virtues  and  his  vices 
are  alike  traced  to  material  causation.  The  blame 
and  the  punishment  which  are  awarded  to  vice 
and  the  praise  which  we  give  to  virtue  are  pro- 
claimed to  be  themselves  the  involuntary  expres- 
sion of  the  feelings  which  the  acts  inspire,  feelings 
which  are  the  result  of  experiences  of  hurt  or 
benefit,  stored  up  through  many  ages,  and  which 
are  as  purely  physical  in  their  origin  as  the  acts 
which  produce  them,  or  as  the  consequences  which 
the  acts  have  yielded  in  life. 

And  finally,  to  complete  the  process,  man's  very 
religion  itself,  which  he  had  regarded  as  the  sure 
testimony  of  his  connexion  with  a  supernatural 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  137 


world,  is  asserted  to  be  as  physical  in  its  origin  as 
the  rest.  It  is  the  fruit  of  circumstance,  inevitably 
developed  at  certain  stages  of  human  life,  and  in 
certain  outward  conditions,  and  changing  its  form 
as  evolution  proceeds  and  the  environments  of  life 
are  altered.  Its  own  supposition,  that  it  deals  with 
the  supernatural,  is  itself  accounted  for  by  purely 
natural  causes.  It  is  indeed  obviously  open  to  the 
defenders  of  religion  to  rejoin,  "If  everything  be  due 
to  nature,  to  what,  or  to  whom,  are  we  to  ascribe  the 
origin  of  nature  itself?  "  But  even  if  the  answer  to 
this  question  were  given  as  religious  men  desire,  it 
would  not  be  enough  for  religion.  It  would  not 
suffice  for  the  maintenance  of  religion  that  we  should 
recognise  a  connexion  with  God  so  indirect  and 
distant  as  that  which  binds  us  to  the  unknowable 
source,  in  ages  immeasurably  distant,  of  a  series 
of  development  from  which  by  inexorable  law  every 
thing  within  and  without  us,  including  our  religion 
itself,  has  grown.  All  the  actual  forms  of  our  life 
and  of  our  religion  would  in  that  case  be  traced  to  our 
material  conditions,  and  not  to  the  distant  original 
impulse  from  which  these  had  sprung.  It  would  be 
with  nature,  and  not  with  God,  that  our  immediate 
dealings  would  be.  Nature  would  be  the  Mayor 


138  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


of  the  Palace,  and  God  the  unseen  and  inactive 
King,  whose  only  known  function  is  to  give  authority 
to  the  real  ruler. 

49.  Yet  even  upon  the  supposition  that  we  have 
now  no  direct  dealings  except  with  nature,  the 
Namrai  belief  in  appearance  which  supernatural  belief 

the  supernatural.     presentg       Qf      bejng      natural       to       man 

raises  an  argument  for  a  necessary  belief  in  it 
on  our  part  which  it  is  difficult  to  set  aside. 
This  nature  with  which  we  have  to  do  inexorably 
frames  and  fashions  not  merely  our  surround- 
ings but  ourselves.  The  very  make  of  our  own 
minds,  and  all  their  powers,  are  the  result  of 
operations  of  nature  which  we  cannot  resist. 
Every  faculty  of  the  mind,  as  memory,  association, 
reasoning,  is  the  laborious  acquisition  of  unnumbered 
ages  of  development.  We  cannot  alter  the  operation 
of  these  mental  processes,  and  it  is  to  no  purpose 
for  us  to  criticise  them.  It  is  found  by  experience 
that  we  may  neglect  to  cultivate  them  in  ourselves, 
and  if  we  do  we  shall  miss  vast  benefits.  But  the 
processes  are  what  development  has  made  them, 
and  we  must  accept  them  as  they  are,  or  renounce 
them  at  the  cost  of  missing  our  human  inheritance 
and  becoming  less  than  men. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  139 


Now  among  the  mental  processes  which  the 
countless  generations  of  mankind  in  the  past  have 
acquired,  practised,  and  bequeathed,  religion  holds 
a  place,  and  it  seems  impossible  to  deny  that  rel;gion 
has  always  included  belief  in  the  supernatural.1  It 
is  a  very  serious  matter  for  any  one  in  these  last 
times  to  say  that  religion  is  not  what  the  mass  of 
mankind  who  have  practised  it  have  always  sup- 
posed it  to  be.  The  audacity  of  such  a  contradiction 
of  the  voice  of  the  majority  is  vastly  increased 
when  the  person  who  utters  it  is  a  believer  in 
evolution  :  for  it  means  then  that  one  who  is  the 
creation  of  the  past,  and  possesses  the  very 
faculties  of  intellect  by  which  his  irreligious  argu- 
ments are  framed  from  the  evolution  of  the  race 
to  which  he  belongs,  shall  refuse  to  receive  a 
certain  portion  of  what  the  past  has  bequeathed 

1  "  He"  [who  desires  to  overthrow  the  faith  in  aught  higher  than 
nature  and  physical  necessity]  "cannot  be  ignorant  that  the  vast 
majority  of  the  human  race  in  all  ages  and  in  all  nations  have 
believed  to  the  contrary  :  that  there  is  not  a  language  on  earth  in 
which  he  could  argue  for  ten  minutes  in  support  of  his  scheme  with- 
out sliding  into  words  and  phrases  that  imply  the  contrary.  It  has 
been  said  that  the  Arabic  has  a  thousand  names  for  a  lion  ;  but  this 
would  be  a  trifle  compared  with  the  number  of  superfluous  phrases 
and  useless  synonyms  that  would  be  found  in  an  index  expurgatorius 
of  any  European  dictionary  constructed  on  the  principles  of  a  con- 
sistent and  strictly  consequential  materialism."  —  Coleridge,  Aids  to 
Reflection,  vol.  i.  p.  101. 


UNIVERSITY 

CM  ;.- 


MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


to  him,  on  the  ground  that  it  does  not  approve 
itself  to  his  reason.  If  evolution  be  true,  and 
the  whole  human  race  be,  as  it  teaches  us,  bound 
together  by  a  chain  that  cannot  be  broken,  what 
powers  or  faculties  can  one  individual  have  thus 
to  reject  an  acquisition  of  the  whole  race  ?  The 
implicit  obedience  to  nature  which  the  doctrines 
of  evolution  impose  upon  every  individual  binds 
him  to  obey  nature,  even  when  she  presses  on 
him  a  belief  in  the  supernatural  as  a  necessary 
condition  of  his  place  in  the  system  of  nature. 
And  if  he  should  claim  that  it  lies  in  his  power 
to  reject  any  part  of  his  human  inheritance,  as, 
for  instance,  the  cultivation  of  his  memory  or  his 
social  or  sexual  instincts,  at  least  he  must  renounce 
all  power  to  pick  and  choose  out  of  what  has  been 
handed  down  to  him,  and  pretend  to  accept  part 
of  religion  without  accepting  belief  in  the  super- 
natural. We  must  take  what  is  given  by  nature 
and  natural  evolution  to  our  minds  in  the  form 
in  which  it  is  given,  or  not  at  all :  and  the  pretence 
of  a  religion  without  the  supernatural  contradicts 
nature,  which  in  every  age  has  practised  super- 
natural religion,  and  no  other. 

50.  This    seems    strong.      But   we   admit    that 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  141 


even  this  would  hardly  be  enough  for  religion. 
The  mind  of  a  man  who  should  try  to  give  him- 
self to  religion  because  the  natural  „,.  .. 

This  would  not 

development  of  his  race  has  imposed 
it   on   him,  while   at   the    same   time 


this  very  obedience  itself  is  rendered 
on  the  ground  that  nature  is  his  only  teacher, 
would  be  in  a  strange,  self-contradictory  condition. 
His  belief  in  the  supernatural  would  be  rendered 
only  on  natural  grounds,  and  would  resemble 
the  half-hearted  obedience  to  a  usurper  which 
the  adherents  of  a  rightful  king  could  bring  them- 
selves to  give  at  the  bidding  of  their  legitimate 
master  himself.  Their  very  service  would  be 
rendered  on  a  principle  which  forbids  it  to  gain 
complete  possession  of  their  deepest  faith  or  their 
truest  affections.  And  yet  this  perplexed  state 
of  mind  seems  to  be  the  furthest  point  in  unbelief 
that  is  possible  for  those  who  wish  to  give  their 
whole  belief  to  nature  and  to  accept,  without 
self-chosen  and  insubordinate  reservations,  what- 
ever comes  to  them  from  their  constitution  as 
it  is. 

But  has  it  indeed  come  to  this  ?     Has  nature 
really  so  closed  us  in  that  there  is  no  direct  access 


1 42  MAWS  KNO  WLEDGE 

to  God  any  longer  possible  ?  It  is  not  so.  There 
remains  still  a  direct  communication  with  Him 
open  through  our  personality,  that  mysterious 
self  which  abides  with  us  all  through  life  and 
comes  into  action  in  every  moment.  Here  lies 
a  spot  on  which  physical  science  has  not  planted 
its  flag.  Here  is  something  within  the  bounds  of 
nature  for  which  nature  does  not  account.  It  is 
an  open  road  to  the  regions  beyond  nature.  And 
the  gap  in  the  circle  which  nature  draws  around 
us  is  large  enough  to  admit  religion  with  all  its 
ensigns  and  its  divine  Captain  at  its  head.  We 
may  leave  to  science  all  that  it  has  ever  claimed 
either  in  our  outward  environment  or  in  our  inward 
constitution,  if  it  will  only  leave  to  us  that  inner 
shrine  of  ourself  which  a  dark  veil  hides  even  from 
our  own  understanding  but  which  is  capable  of 
containing  the  presence  of  God,  and  that  inter- 
course with  personal  life  beyond  ourselves  to 
which  we  stand  committed  by  our  social  instincts, 
and  which  involves  all  the  mystery  of  faith  in 
God.  In  God's  action  upon  the  human  personality 
exercised  directly,  we  might  find  the  sphere  of 
all  those  answers  to  our  prayers  and  ?spirations 
which  come  under  the  title  of  gifts  of  grace.  And 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  14;, 


vast  effects,  even  upon  nature  itself,  might  be 
brought  about  through  influences  directly  exerted 
upon  the  spirit  of  man.  It  is  hard  to  say  what 
class  of  circumstances  in  the  life  of  man  would 
have  to  be  excepted  from  the  sphere  of  religion, 
even  if  we  were  to  allow  that  the  primary  sphere 
of  religion  is  not  nature,  but  the  personality  of 
man.  But  if  we  believe  in  God  as  the  Creator  of 
our  secret  selves,  with  all  their  wonderful  powers 
and  connexions,  we  must  needs  ascribe  to  Him 
a  kind  of  power  in  nature  which  is  akin  to  that 
which  our  own  will  exercises.  And  religion  among 
mankind  seems  to  have  been  guided  by  this  con- 
sciousness. Nature,  indeed,  speaks  of  God  to  a 
man  who  has  already  found  God  very  near  to 
him,  in  his  mouth  and  in  his  heart.  But  it  is 
extremely  doubtful  whether  nature  has  ever 
spoken  of  God  for  the  first  time  to  a  man  who 
had  never  found  God  through  his  own  conscious- 
ness, or  through  that  intercourse  with  his  fellow 
men  which  wakens  him  to  the  lessons  of  his  own 
consciousness  by  presenting  to  him  other  beings 
who  are  partakers  of  his  personality  and  helpers 
in  its  life. 

51.  A  curious    fact    in    the   history   of  religion 


144  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

is  explained  by  the  supposition  that  it  is  through 
his  own  consciousness  and  through  the  knowledge 
of  other  men  whom  an  instinct  of  his  conscious- 
M.n  Caches  God  ness  recognises  as  having  the  same 

through  man.        ^^     as    hjmself>     that      man     reaches 

God.  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has  busied  himself  for 
a  great  number  of  years  in  collecting,  with  the  aid 
of  fellow-workers  in  many  lands,  facts  bearing  upon 
the  social  habits  of  various  races.  Great  attention, 
therefore,  is  due  to  his  authority  when  he  informs 
us  that  in  no  case  is  nature-worship  the  earliest 
form  of  religion  found  among  barbarous  men. 
According  to  him,  the  worship  of  ancestors,  the 
ghosts  of  tribal  chieftains,  is  the  earliest  germ 
out  of  which  advances  in  religion  are  developed. 

Now  this  is  a  state  of  facts  which  seems  very 
difficult  to  account  for  upon  Mr.  Spencer's  own 
theory  as  to  what  religion  is  and  where  it  finds 
its  hold  upon  human  nature.  That  theory  lays 
down  that  as  well  in  human  nature  as  everywhere 
else,  we  have  to  do  with  an  unknowable  power. 
The  first  principle  of  agnosticism  requires  that  the 
unknowable  shall  be  recognised  as  underlying 
every  part  of  life  and  nature  equally  ;  for  if  its 
influence  be  found  more  in  any  phenomenon  or 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  145 

any  series  or  combination  of  phenomena  than  in 
any  other,  this  amounts  to  a  revelation.  The  un- 
knowable is  then  preferring  certain  species  of 
phenomena,  and  something  about  its  nature 
is  thereby  known.  Now,  if  the  unknowable  be 
diffused  with  an  absolute  equality,  why  should 
barbarous  mankind  have  agreed  everywhere  to 
find  religion — which,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer, 
means  but  to  recognise  the  unknowable — in  one 
only  species  of  phenomena,  namely,  the  spirit 
of  man  ?  But  if,  as  seems  rather  to  be  the  case, 
it  is  not  everywhere  equally  in  nature,  but  spe- 
cially in  man  himself,  that  man  discovers  the 
mystery  which  leads  him  to  religion,  it  is  not 
difficult  to  see  why  the  earliest  efforts  after  a 
religion  in  barbarous  races  should  take  the  form 
of  the  worship  of  human  spirits  :  or  why,  if  we 
prefer  so  to  put  it,  men  degraded  from  a  better 
knowledge  of  God  should  mark  their  earliest 
efforts  after  recovery  or  their  last  dim  recollec- 
tions of  ancestral  beliefs  in  the  supernatural, 
with  this  human  form. 

52.  The  most  elementary  connexion  which  the 
mysterious  character  of  our  own  personality  has 
with  religion  is  simply  the  negative  one  which 

L 


146       ,  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

results    from    our   sense   of   a   dark   place   and    a 
part  unaccounted  for  found  in  the  very  centre  of 

First  step  from     OUr    OWI1    bdng-       Ther6    Is    &I 


0     aCCOUnt 

things.  And  what  we  mean  by 
the  mystery.  accounting  for  things  is  tracing  them 
to  the  causation  of  facts  preceding,  which  according 
to  the  known  connexion  of  series  of  events  in 
the  world  were  capable  of  producing  them.  Now, 
however  much  in  our  life  and  being  we  may  set 
down  as  being  on  this  principle  accounted  for,  we 
are  always  conscious  of  something  which  is  not. 
When  we  say  "  I  did  so  and  so,"  there  may  be  a 
good  deal,  let  us  even  say  all  of  the  thing  done, 
which  is  satisfactorily  accounted  for  by  bodily 
constitution,  acquired  habits,  and  surrounding 
circumstances.  But  even  if  the  whole  of  the  act 
were  so  accounted  for,  this  does  not  account  for 
the  agent  who  did  it.  That  little  word  I,  which 
claims  the  thing  done,  and  the  powers  by  which  it 
was  done,  for  its  own,  and  yet  stands  separate 
from  both,  expresses  an  element  in  the  action  not 
accounted  for  by  any  precedent  earthly  facts. 
And  it  constantly  forces  itself  upon  our  attention 
as  finding  no  sufficient  cause  or  source  in  any 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  147 

earthly  circumstance.  Let  us  compare  the  ease 
with  which  we  trace  the  habits,  desires,  and 
actions  of  any  other  man  or  our  own  to  circum- 
stances which  have  gone  before,  with  the  difficulty, 
or  rather  impossibility,  which  we  experience  in 
supposing  that  these  or  any  other  circumstances 
account  for  the  self  in  which  these  habits  or 
acts  are  inherent.1  We  say,  He  is  hungry,  or, 
He  is  drunken — and  we  readily  ascribe  the  hunger 
or  the  drunkenness  to  the  circumstances  which 
are  known  to  be  capable  of  producing  such  a 
state.  And  if  we  want  to  trace  it  further  back 
we  find  adequate  causes  for  it  in  the  physiological 
facts  of  man's  frame  and  in  the  history  of  his 
evolution.  But  it  is  in  vain  that  we  attempt 
to  restrict  the  meaning  of  the  word  "  he "  to 
anything  which  can  be  ascribed  to  these  material 
circumstances.  There  is  always  something  more 
in  it  than  that  which  may  be  traced  to  such  a 
source.  And  the  recognition  of  this  mysterious 
fact  is  not  an  effort  of  thought  which  a  few  can 


1  "  La  personne  n'est  pas  1'individu.  L'individu  se  compose  de 
tous  les  accidents  particuliers  qui  distinguent  un  homme  d'un  autre : 
ces  accidents  perissent  avec  nous  :  c'est  la  chair.  La  personne  est 
la  conscience  de  1'impersonnel :  c'est  1'esprit." — Janet,  La  Morale, 
preface. 

L   2 


I48  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


reach,  but  lies  upon  the  surface  and  is  felt  always 
and  by  everybody,  and  most  of  all  by  men  in 
respect  to  themselves.  This  unaccountable  con- 
sciousness accompanies  us  through  life  and  lies 
at  the  root  of  life.  It  must  have  been  felt  by 
the  lowest  savage  who  ever  had  a  human  con- 
sciousness, and  it  remains  equally  mysterious 
within  the  being  of  the  most  accomplished  man 
of  science. 

53.  Now  this  must  always  impart  a  mysterious 

character  to  human  life.     It  is  impossible  for  men 

to    maintain   the   self-satisfied    sense 

This  even  alone 

would  of    knowing    all    about    themselves 

be  a  religion. 

except  by  excluding  from  their 
minds  a  fact  which  ought  to  lie  nearer  to 
them  than  any  other,  since  it  lies  at  the  be- 
ginning of  all  action  and  of  all  thought.  And 
this  fact  is,  that  while  they  may  know  all  about 
the  surroundings  of  the  self,  the  self  they  cannot 
know.  Even  if  we  could  know  to  the  very  last 
all  the  powers  and  all  the  laws  of  our  body  and 
of  our  mind,  that  would  only  bring  into  greater 
prominence  the  humbling  but  certain  truth  that 
we  do  not  know  how  we  came  to  be  ourselves, 
or  in  what  ourselves  consist. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  149 

If  we  could  imagine  this  ignorance  about  our 
own  being  felt  by  a  perfectly  self-restrained  mind 
determined  not  to  travel  out  of  logical  con- 
victions, it  might  still  be  capable  in  itself  of 
yielding  something  not  unworthy  of  the  name  of 
a  religion.  This  special  mystery  in  ourselves 
would  not  be  the  impotent  thing  for  moral  and 
religious  purposes  which  the  general  admission 
of  an  un-knowable  element  in  all  things  undoubt- 
edly is.  An  unknowable  equally  diffused  every 
where  is  not  the  concern  of  any  creature  in  par- 
ticular. It  affords  the  most  striking  example 
possible  of  the  truth  that  what  is  everybody's 
business  is  nobody's  business.  But  to  find  a 
mysterious  element  in  ourselves  which  does  not, 
so  far  as  we  know,  present  itself  in  the  same 
form  in  any  other  creature,  animate  or  inani- 
mate, is  a  special  call  upon  us.  It  cannot  but 
impart  a  feeling  of  awe  to  our  self-conscious- 
ness. It  cannot  but  keep  us  waiting  anxiously 
to  know  whether  perhaps  from  that  dark  abyss 
out  of  which  we  spring  and  from  which  our 
personal  life  is  continually  issuing,  something 
may  not  come  in  the  present  state  or  in  some 
future  one  to  guide  us  amidst  the  difficulties  of 


1  50  -MAWS  KNO  W  LEDGE 

our  life,  and  to  furnish  us  with  some  clue  to 
its  perplexities. 

54.  But  we  could  not  expect  that  the  mass 
of  minds  to  which  the  mystery  of  being  has 

But  human  been  brought  home  would  treat  it  with 
navoki  wiSthhe  such  self-restraint  as  to  abstain  in  de- 


fault  of  better  knowledge  from  filling 
the  void  with  imaginations.  That  the  imaginations 
of  heathen  faiths  have  their  origin  not  so  much  in 
the  general  mystery  of  nature  as  in  the  special 
mystery  of  human  nature  is  testified  by  the  human 
character  which  all  religions  bear.  Whether  the 
processes  of  nature  have  any  such  share  at  all  in 
the  origin  of  mythologies  as  a  well-known  school 
ascribes  to  them  may  be  well  doubted,  and  has 
been  doubted  by  some  who  have  the  best  right 
to  speak.  But  even  if  we  were  to  ascribe  this 
prominent  and  originating  place  in  the  history  of 
religion  to  the  awe  and  wonder  with  which  men 
viewed  the  processes  of  nature,  the  fact  that 
these  natural  processes  appear  everywhere  sym- 
bolised and  embodied  in  stories  of  human  life 
shows  the  more  strongly  that  for  man  the 
mystery  of  nature  is  concentrated  in  the  mystery 
of  man.  Buddhism,  that  strange  religion,  seems 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  151 

above  all  others  to  feel  the  burden  and  the  pain 
of  our  existence  as  separate  selves  and  teaches 
the  final  absorption  and  loss  of  personality 
in  the  ocean  of  being  or  not  being.  But 
Buddhism  even  by  its  opposition  to  personality, 
and  its  strain  ancl  struggle  with  the  fact  of  this  awful 
gift,  and  its  very  desire  after  impersonal  existence, 
testifies  to  the  fact  that  personality  is  the  great 
thought  which  occupies  its  attention  and  furnishes 
its  motive.  And  as  a  religion  actually  existing  and 
practised  by  men,  Buddhism  loses  all  its  strained 
longing  after  the  loss  of  personality,  and  becomes 
just  as  human  and  just  as  fully  embodied  in  the 
belief  and  worship  of  a  person  as  any  form  of 
paganism. 

In  most  religions,  however  degraded  be  their 
popular  form,  there  is  discoverable  an  original 
germ  of  purer  and  more  spiritual  character.  Be- 
hind the  sensuous  forms  of  the  popular  deities 
the  one  spiritual  source  of  all  lies  hid,  unknown 
to  the  multitude,  but  still  confessed  in  ancient 
books  or  rites  that  have  lost  their  spiritual  mean- 
ing to  those  who  practise  them.  But  although 
the  one  spiritual  deity  be  free  from  the  bodily 
form  and  from  the  sensual  associations  of  the 


1 5 2  MAN'S  KNO  W LEDGE 

popular  divinities,  there  is  no  reason  for  imagin- 
ing that  He  is  less  truly  personal.  In  retreating 
from  sensuous  into  spiritual  conceptions  of  God, 
we  are  not  retreating  from  the  personal  into  the 
impersonal,  but  from  material  associations  into 
true  personality.  We  are  seeking  an  author  and 
source  of  our  own  essential  life.  So  argues  St. 
Paul :  "  God  that  made  the  world  and  all  things 
therein  dwelleth  not  in  temples  made  with  hands, 
neither  is  worshipped  with  men's  hands,  as  though 
He  needed  anything,  seeing  He  giveth  unto  all 
life  and  breath  and  all  things."  And  the  process 
of  degradation  which  takes  place  when  a  spiritual 
conception  of  deity  becomes  embodied  in  earthly 
forms,  and  then  debased  by  superstition  and  sen- 
suality, finds  not  only  its  counterpart  but  its 
close  companion  in  the  degradation  of  the  human 
personality  itself,  imprisoned,  it  knows  not  how, 
in  a  human  body,  and  forced  to  acknowledge  as 
its  own  an  earthly  sensual  life  which  is  wholly 
beneath  it. 

55.  We  have  been  regarding  our  self  merely  as 
a  dark  and  unexplained  part  of  our  constitution. 
That  is  one  element  in  our  conception  of  it.  But 
this  confession  of  our  ignorance  as  to  what  we 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  153 

are  and  how  we  came  to  be  is  not  the  whole  of 
our  conception  of  self,  nor  is  this  ignorance  the 
only  part  of  our  idea  of  personality  in 

The  second  step 

which  religion  finds  a  place  of  lodg-     is  found  in  the 

necessity  of  con- 

ment.     For  our  self,  though  incompre-       nectingthe 

mysterious  self  in 

hensible  in   its  nature,   is  revealed   in        its  active 

character  with 

action.     It  is   not   a  negation.     It  is    some  power  and 

cause  beyond. 

indeed  the  source  of  all  activity,  and 
though  mysterious  in  its  being  is  yet  in  its  work  the 
best  known  of  all  agencies  which  we  find  to  exist. 
It  is  the  cause  of  all  action  and  of  everything  that 
results  from  action.  It  is  impossible  for  us  to  refrain 
from  tracing  events  to  their  causes,  and  there 
are  multitudes  of  events  which,  traced  up  to  their 
causes,  bring  us  at  last  to  ourselves.  We  caused 
them :  which  means,  not  that  this  or  that  faculty 
which  we  possess  was  their  cause,  but  that  the 
mystery  behind  the  faculty,  which  obliges  us  to 
call  it  our  own,  moved  the  faculty  and  caused  the 
result.  It  is  true  that  many  collateral  causes  may 
be  named  as  accounting  for  the  form  which  our 
actions  took :  but  all  these  would  have  been 
nothing,  or  at  least  nothing  to  us,  unless  we  our- 
selves had  supplied  the  spark  which  set  the  whole 
machinery  at  work. 


T  54  MAN'S  KNO  W LEDGE 

Now  is  this  cause  of  all  that  we  are  or  do  to 
be  regarded  as  itself  uncaused  ?  The  word  cause 
is  here  used  in  its  ordinary  sense  of  an  adequate 
antecedent,  the  sense  in  which  we  every  moment 
demand  to  know  the  cause  of  everything  that 
happens  and  anything  that  exists,  or  at  least 
suppose  that  there  is  a  cause  of  everything, 
whether  we  know  that  cause  or  not.  Our  bodies 
are  built  up  and  constituted  by  a  series  of  natural 
events,  and  every  position  of  every  particle  has 
its  natural  cause.  Though  natural  causation  be 
not  so  clear  in  respect  of  our  intellectual  and 
emotional  faculties,  yet  we  see  that  natural  causa- 
tion rules  them  in  part,  and  we  know  not  but  that 
it  may  rule  them  altogether.  Our  powers  of  mind, 
our  passions,  and  our  preferences  are  caused,  we 
know  not  how  far,  by  facts  preceding.  But  as  to 
that  self  which  lies  behind  body  and  mind,  pas- 
sions and  preferences,  we  cannot  say  the  same. 
The  derivation  of  all,  both  of  our  bodily  and 
mental  powers,  from  previous  facts  in  the  world's 
progress,  does  not  trace  the  origin  of  the  self  to 
the  same  source.  Far  from  it.  The  more  com- 
pletely and  absolutely  we  give  up  the  whole  series 
of  bodily  and  mental  action  with  all  the  powers 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  155 

from  which  it  proceeds,  to  the  examination  of 
science,  and  the  more  willingly  we  accept  the  na- 
tural causation  which  science  has  found  for  some 
of  them,  acknowledging  that  some  day  a  similar 
causation  will  be  found  for  all  :  by  so  much  the 
more  clearly  do  we  see  that  no  natural  antecedent 
has  been  found  for  the  personal  ingredient  in  the 
series  which  claims  the  beginning  of  all  for  its 
own  and  mingles  strangely  with  the  whole.  We 
ourselves  are  neither  our  bodies  nor  yet  our 
minds :  it  is  a  necessity  of  thought  to  distinguish 
ourselves  from  both. 

56.  Does  then  human  personality  alone  among 
all  the  powers  that  are  at  work  in  the  world  hang 
in  the  air  ?     Is  the  cord  on  which  our 
whole  life  depends   itself  attached  to     £JS5i«!?£ 

uncaused. 

nothing  ?  Does  no  antecedent  fact, 
no  being  or  existence  anywhere,  account  for 
this  personality  in  the  sense  of  preceding  and 
producing  it  by  some  appropriate  bond  of  con- 
nexion ?  It  is  quite  impossible  for  us  to  think 
so.  Our  personality  demands  an  adequate  and 
appropriate,  that  is  to  say,  a  personal  cause. 
One  would  think  that  this  is  obvious  enough  to 
be  understood  and  felt  by  every  one.  The  notion 


156  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

of  a  great  First  Cause,  well  founded  though  it  be, 
yet  may  lie  too  far  back  to  have  influenced  uni- 
versal mankind.  But  the  existence  of  a  personal 
being,  a  Being  above  us,  to  whom  our  personality 
attaches  itself,  and  from  whom  it  proceeds,  has 
been  proved  by  experience  to  lie  close  to  the 
minds  and  hearts  of  all  men.  We  feel  after  Him 
and  strive  to  find  Him,  although  He  be  not  far 
from  every  one  of  us,  for  in  Him  we  live  and 
move  and  have  "our  being — as  a  poet  even  of  the 
heathen  themselves  has  said,  "For  we  are  also  His 
offspring."  The  apostle's  appeal  is  made  to  the 
consciousness  of  his  Athenian  audience  and  to 
the  testimony  borne  to  that  consciousness  by 
those  who  in  past  ages  gave  a  voice  to  the  general 
mind.  And  it  is  surely  well  founded. 

57.  Nevertheless  this  appeal  is  disregarded  by 

one   of  the   popular   systems   of  the   day,      The 

Philosophy  of  the  Unconscious  finds, 

A  personal  cause 

required  with     as  its  name  denotes,  its  very  essence  in 

which  to  connect 

our  human      the  belie!  that  we  are  not  of  the  race 

personality.    The 

Philosophy  of  the  of  God  in  the  sense  which  the  apostle 

Unconscious. 

claims,  and  do  not  find  Him  near  us  in 
that  human  consciousness  which  sets  us  apart  from 
nature.  In  the  philosophy  of  the  unconscious, 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD  157 

God  is  found  in  nature  as  the  cause,  but  when  we 
come   to    man    and    to   that    conscious  life  which 
makes  man  what  he  is  God  is  the  cause  no  longer. 
Von    Hartmann    traces    the   marks    of    design    in 
nature,  and  in  man  considered  as  a  part  of  nature, 
with  a  clearness  and  power  equal  to  that  of  Paley 
and  a  wealth  of  knowledge  far  above  him.    In  every 
quarter  we  are  bidden  to  discern  the  existence  of 
some  phenomenon  which  could  not  have  come  by 
chance  as   the  sufficient  proof  of  the  existence  of 
an  intellect  and  a  power  adequate  to  cause  it.   The 
arrangement  is   everywhere   considered   to   prove 
that  the  thought  and  conception  of  the  arrange- 
ment   must    have    previously   existed,    and    have 
been  aimed  at  as  an  end  by  that  incomprehensible 
power   which   works    in  nature.     But   when  after 
pursuing  this  process  through  nature  and  through 
all  the  unconscious  part  of  man's  frame  we  come 
at  last  to  that  highest  part  of  man,  his  conscious- 
ness of  himself  as  a  personal  existence,  there  we 
are  bidden  to  stop.     We  are  no  longer  to  argue 
that    this    wonderful    fact    is    a    proof   that    the 
thought    and    conception    of   it    existed    before- 
hand  in    the   mind  of  that    power   by   which    it 
has     been     produced  ;     but     Consciousness     has 


1 58  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

been   originated   by  a  Being  which   is   itself  un- 
conscious. 

Man's  soul  stands  in  a  very  strange  position  in 
this  philosophy.1  It  is  something  which  comes 
as  illegitimate  children  come  into  the  world, 
unexpected  and  unprovided  for,  and  very  un- 
welcome. Everything  else  in  nature  proceeds 
systematically  from  adequate  causes,  that  is  to  say, 
from  causes  which  implicitly  conceive  and  intend 
their  effects  :  but  not  so  the  soul  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  man.  To  allow  that  this  was 
conceived  or  intended  beforehand  would  be  to 
ascribe  consciousness  to  the  all-producing  power : 
for  how  could  consciousness  be  intended  or  aimed 
at  except  by  a  conscious  being  ?  And  to  recog- 
nise a  conscious  origin  of  all  things  would  be  to 
acknowledge  God :  the  All  One  in  this  case  is  no 
longer  the  unconscious.  The  consciousness  of 
man,  alone  among  phenomena,  must  not  be  re- 
garded as  an  intended  end.  This  is  an  inconsistent 
position.  It  is  to  stop  short  in  an  unwarranted 
and  unreasonable  manner  in  the  application  of 
a  method  of  reasoning  which  has  been  used  with 
effect  through  every  part  of  nature  and  being.  To 

1  Philosophy  of  the  Unconscious,  vol.  ii.  p.  248.     (Eng.  trans.). 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  159 

be  consistent  you  must  either  recognise  conscious- 
ness both  in  the  divine  cause  and  in  the  human 
effect,  or  if  you  deny  it  in  the  cause  you  must 
deny  it  in  the  effect,  and  pronounce  that  what 
seems  consciousness  in  man  is  not  a  true  fact  at 
all,  but  an  unreal  imagination. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  at  all  that  the  sense  of 
a  mystery  in  our  nature,  and  the  necessity  of  con- 
necting our  personality  with  an  adequate  cause 
preceding,  have  been  widely  operative  among  man- 
kind. Some  trouble  indeed  is  required  to  reflect 
upon  these  mental  operations,  as  upon  any  others ; 
those  which  are  most  instinctive  and  most  com- 
mon are  often  the  most  difficult  to  analyse  by 
reflection.  And  these  mental  wants  may  take  a 
form  in  highly  cultivated  minds  of  which  those 
which  are  in  a  lower  place  of  the  scale  are  quite 
incapable.  The  developed  intellect  separates  the 
mystery  of  human  nature  from  all  the  other 
mysteries  of  creation,  and  realises  it  in  its  own 
distinctness :  and  demands  a  cause  so  far  back 
as  in  the  beginning  of  all  things  and  which  finds 
no  external  cause  of  its  own  existence.  These 
refinements  may  be  unthought  of  by  uncivilised 
men,  and  perhaps  even  by  the  mass  of  the 


1  60  MA  N'S  KNO  W  LEDGE 

civilised  to  this  day.  But  the  dim  feeling  of 
something  wonderful  and  something  above  nature 
in  the  personality  of  man,  and  the  instinct  which 
prevents  man  from  believing  that  his  inmost 
nature  attaches  itself  to  nothing  as  its  cause,  are 
feelings  not  beyond  the  most  undeveloped  minds 
that  can  be  called  human.  They  are  not  more 
wonderful  than  the  other  mental  processes  which 
savages  and  children  admittedly  use.  And  as 
matter  of  fact,  we  know  that  no  race  of  mankind 
has  been  so  entirely  bound  down  by  habit  to  a 
sensual  existence  as  not  to  have  made  efforts  after 
expressing  its  sense  of  the  mystery  of  personal 
life  and  finding  a  cause  why  man  is  man. 

58.  Even   speculative   interest   in    the   question 

alone  might  suffice   to  drive  men  to   a   religion. 

The  curious  intellect  asserts  its  claims 

Third  step. 

The  moral  nature  and   Demands  its  employment  among 

of  man  imparts 


a11  mankind,  and  the  imagination  helps 
demand  of  a     t     suppiy   what  the   curious   intellect 

cause  of  ~*    / 

personality,  ^dn*.  But  there  is  another  power  in 
human  nature  which  removes  the  question  whether 
a  divine  source  lies  behind  our  human  personality 
out  of  the  sphere  of  speculation  and  invests  it  at 
once  with  the  most  practical  character.  This  part 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  161 

o.f  human  nature,  though  like  many  others  liable 
to  be  obscured  in  this  or  that  individual,  and  to 
be  overborne  by  passions  and  interests  for  a  time, 
is  yet  indeed  as  essential  a  component  of  man's 
constitution  as  any  faculty,  and  holds  not  only  a 
place,  but  a  commanding  place,  among  the  ruling 
principles  of  his  life.  It  is  conscience,  which  lives 
in  human  nature  like  a  rightful  king  whose  claim 
can  never  be  forgotten  by  his  people  even  though 
they  dethrone  and  misuse  him,  and  whose  pre- 
sence on  the  seat  of  judgment  can  alone  make 
the  nation  to  be  at  peace  within  itself. 

It  is  very  well  known  that  of  late  years  many 
attempts  have  been  made  not  merely  to  subject 
the  history  of  conscience  to  scientific  examination 
— a  claim  which  every  principle  and  every  belief 
must  contentedly  submit  to — but  actually  to 
prove  that  the  formation  of  conscience  is  due  to 
natural  evolution.  When  such  a  theory  is  held  in 
its  complete  and  only  consistent  form,  it  means 
that  the  natural  pleasures  of  the  senses  are  the 
basis  upon  which  all  choice  of  action  on  the  part 
of  man  must  originally  rest.  Such  pleasures  are 
so  very  often  at  the  disposal  of  others  to  give,  that 
the  approval  of  us  on  the  part  of  others  which  may 

M 


1 62  MA WS  KNO  W LEDGE 


lead  them  to  give  us  pleasures  comes  through 
association  to  be  valued  as  a  good  in  itself.  Now 
communities  are  naturally  led  to  confer  their 
approval  upon  those  who  show  themselves  willing 
to  be  of  service  to  the  common  welfare;  and  as 
the  pleasurable  actions  which  are  serviceable  to 
the  community  are  sufficiently  rewarded  by  being 
pleasurable,  the  community  reserves  its  chief 
praise  for  those  actions  which  require  large  com- 
pensations to  induce  any  one  to  do  them,  that 
is  to  say,  such  as  are  self-denying.  The  families 
in  which  self-denial  becomes  an  inheritance  are 
kept  from  extinction  by  the  help  of  the  races  to 
which  they  belong,  while  the  selfish  are  permitted 
to  die  away,  or  are  deliberately  destroyed  because 
of  use  to  nobody.  And  the  races  in  which  self- 
sacrifice  for  the  sake  of  the  community  or  the 
practice  of  those  virtues  which  experience  proves 
beneficial  to  it  most  widely  prevails  are  naturally 
those  which  maintain  themselves  in  the  struggle 
for  existence.  Thus  self-denial  and  virtue  grow 
more  and  more  to  be  inherited  attributes  of  human 
nature,  and  subjects  of  preference  in  themselves, 
until  at  last  we  recognise  in  the  determination  of 
a  saint  to  endure  martyrdom  rather  than  deny  his 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  163 


convictions,  a  transmuted  form  of  the  same  desire 
for  pleasure  which  in  a  remote  age  led  his  an- 
cestors to  gratify  passion  without  regard  for  the 
consequences  to  others  or  even  to  themselves.1 

59.  It  seems  pretty  obvious  that  this  view  of 
the  nature  of  conscience  if  it  were  ever 

The  purely 

generally  recognised   in  a  community   natural  theory  of 

the  growth  of 
WOUld     Stop     moral    growth.       It     might         conscience  is 

morally  fatal  and 

have  a  certain  tendency  to  make  peo-      intellectually 

inadequate. 

pie  practise  the  self-denying  duties  (if 

such    they  could    be    called)   which    had   actually 

by   the    development    of   ages   preceding  become 

1  See  George  Eliot's  statement  of  her  moral  system  in  the  "  Notes 
on  the  Spanish  Gipsy  "  (Life  of  George  Eliot,  chapter  xv.).  "  Love, 
pity,  constituting  sympathy  and  generous  joy  with  regard  to  the  lot 
of  our  fellow  men,  comes  in — has  been  growing  since  the  beginning 
—  enormously  enhanced  by  wider  vision  of  results — by  an  imagina- 
tion actively  interested  in  the  lot  of  mankind  generally  :  and  these 
feelings  become  piety — i.e.  loving,  willing,  submissive  and  heroic 
Promethean  effort  towards  high  possibilities  which  may  result  from 
our  individual  life.  There  is  really  no  moral  '  sanction '  but  this 
inward  impulse.  The  will  of  God  is  the  same  thing  as  the  will  of 
other  men  compelling  us  to  work,  and  avoid  what  they  have  seen  to 
be  harmful  to  social  existence.  Disjoined  from  any  perceived  good, 
the  divine  will  is  simply  so  much  as  we  have  ascertained  of  the  facts 
of  existence  which  compel  obedience  at  our  peril."  It  is  the  result 
of  this  theory  that  the  author's  works,  nobly  as  they  depict  the  moral 
struggles  of  those  who  have  a  noble  ideal,  are  neither  fitted  to 
enforce  a  noble  ideal  on  those  who  have  it  not,  nor  yet  to  raise  the 
moral  ideal  of  mankind  beyond  the  standard  which  has  actually  been 
reached  by  the  race.  To  do  these  things  has  been  the  task  of 
writers  and  workers  inspired  from  a  higher  source  than  the  actual 
attainments  of  the  human  society. 

M   2 


1 64  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

pleasurable  to  them.  It  would  enable  men  to  see 
that  the  greatest  happiness  for  self  may  often 
be  found  in  apparent  self-sacrifice.  But  the  same 
knowledge  that  pleasure  is  the  first  principle  of 
morality,  which  thus  stamps  our  actual  attainments 
in  morality  as  so  many  pleasures  which  have 
become  necessary  to  our  highest  enjoyment,  will 
forbid  us  to  go  at  all  beyond  the  amount  of  self- 
denial  which  can  be  felt  to  have  become  pleasur- 
able. Every  principle  of  nature  will  forbid  a  man 
to  extend  the  area  of  his  self-sacrifice,  and  will 
bid  him  keep  the  few  self-regarding  pleasures  that 
are  left  him.  Conscience  will  be  regarded  as  an 
inmate  of  the  garrison  whose  connexions  with 
the  enemies  of  our  comfort  outside  are  extremely 
suspicious.  It  will  be  constantly  accused  of 
wanting  to  lead  us  into  degrees  of  virtue  up  to 
which  we  are  not  educated  and  which  are  not 
for  our  happiness.  It  cannot  be  expelled,  and 
indeed  wise  lovers  of  themselves  could  not  wish 
to  expel  a  faculty  which  may  yield  pleasure  so 
exquisite.  But  it  must  be  carefully  confined 
within  the  space  to  which  it  can  prove  its  title  ; 
and  it  must  be  kept  under  strict  watch  and  control. 
And  the  growth  of  conscience  would  thus  be 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  165 

stopped  even  if  we  could  suppose  that  its  present 
height  of  attainment  would  continue  unimpaired. 

We  cannot  avoid  recognising  such  a  tendency 
in  these  physical  and  natural  theories  of  the  origin 
of  conscience :  and  it  affords  a  sound  argument 
against  maintaining  the  theories.  Some  people  as- 
sume, without  much  consideration,  that  it  is  always 
best,  that  the  truth  should  be  known.  But  if  it 
were  true  that  conscience  rests  only  on  a  natural 
basis,  and  that  the  call  to  practise  virtue  if  our 
nature  has  been  so  developed  as  to  be  adapted  to 
virtue,  is  precisely  of  the  same  character  as  the 
call  to  practise  vice  if  it  be  vice  for  which  we  are 
naturally  fitted,  it  would  seem  to  be  expedient 
that  this  false  truth  should  be  concealed  from 
the  mass  of  mankind.  But,  moral  reasons  apart, 
it  is  most  unlikely,  as  matter  of  bare  theory,  that 
an  account  of  conscience  of  this  character  can  be 
complete.  It  does  not  account  for  the  facts.  It 
may  indeed  account  for  a  great  deal  of  the  form 
and  mould  of  moral  action,  and  the  particular 
conduct  which  morality  demands  from  age  to  age. 
But  it  does  not  account  for  the  fiery  power  which 
drives  the  molten  metal  all  glowing  to  fill  the 
form.  It  does  not  account  for  the  spirit  of  growth 


166  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

and  the  steady  longing  for  greater  strength  and 
wider  application  than  it  already  possesses,  which 
is  even  a  more  characteristic  attribute  of  conscience 
than  its  level  working  within  the  sphere  of  duty 
which  has  been  cleared  for  it.  It  does  not 
explain  the  mystical  element  in  conscience ; 
the  readiness  which  it  has  always  shown  to  ally 
itself  with  religion  and  which  is  observable  even 
in  cases  where  all  fixed  belief  has  been  entirely 
cast  away.  Nor  does  the  natural  theory  account 
for  the  intensely  personal  character  of  conscience. 
It  makes  the  growth  of  morality  resemble  that  of 
a  plant,  as  if  personality  were  passive  in  the  pro- 
cess, and  found  itself  changed  from  sensuality  to 
self-sacrifice  as  a  river  finds  its  colour  changed 
from  gray  to  blue  by  simply  passing  from  beneath 
the  cloud  to  beneath  the  sky.  No  doubt  a  great 
deal  in  our  life,  and  even  in  our  moral  life,  is  of 
this  passive  character.  But  how  apathetically  do 
we  regard  such  passive  habits  !  How  little  do  we 
ascribe  them  to  ourselves !  How  little  do  we 
trouble  our  conscience  about  actions,  good  or  bad, 
which  are  really  imposed  on  us  by  our  constitution 
and  our  circumstances !  When  conscience  comes 
into  play  it  makes  the  most  imperious  distinctions 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  167 

between  our  self  and  our  circumstances,  habits, 
and  propensities,  mental  or  bodily.  It  says  to  us 
that  we  must  not  hand  over  the  blame  or  the 
responsibility  to  our  outward  circumstances,  nor 
to  our  bodily  necessities,  nor  yet  to  our  mental 
habits,  whether  inherited  or  acquired.  It  is  not 
any  of  these,  but  you  yourself  that  are  responsible  ; 
so  speaks  conscience.1  Very  often  we  pretend  to 
think  this  personal  treatment  on  the  part  of  our 
conscience  unreasonable.  We  follow  circumstances, 
or  desire,  or  habit.  We  live  that  impersonal  life 
of  a  thing,  carried  about  by  divers  currents,  which, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  physical  science,  would 
really  seem  to  be  our  only  true  life.  But  it  does 
not  answer.  When  conscience  awakes  nothing 
seems  real  and  nothing  true  except  that  personal 


1  Compare  St.  Augustine's  description  of  his  unawakened  condition 
(Confess,  v.  10)  :  "Adhuc  enim  mihi  videbatur  non  esse  nos  qui 
peccamus  sed  nescio  quam  aliam  in  nobis  peccare  naturam :  et 
delectabat  superbiam  meam  extra  culpam  esse  :  et  cum  aliquid  mali 
fecissem  non  confiteri  me  fecisse  ut  sanares  animam  meam  quoniam 
peccabat  tibi  sed  excusare  earn  amabam  et  accusare  nescio  quid 
aliud  quod  mecum  esset  et  ego  non  essem."  And  the  reverse  in  his 
converted  state  (Confess,  viii.  10) :  "Ego  cum  deliberabam  ut  jam 
servirem  Domino  Deo  meo  sicut  diu  disposueram,  ego  eram  qui 
volebam,  ego  qui  nolebam  :  ego,  ego  eram." 

On  the  other  hand  Montaigne:  "Those  passions  which  only 
touch  the  outward  part  of  us  cannot  be  said  to  be  ours.  To  make 
them  so  there  must  be  a  concurrence  of  the  whole  man." 


i68  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

life  which  regards  all  things,  both  without  the  mind 
and  within  it,  as  the  instruments  with  which  it  has 
to  work.  The  nature  of  the  instrument  will,  to  be 
sure,  greatly  determine  the  results  of  the  work. 
But  the  responsibility  rests  on  the  workman  who 
employs  them. 

60.  There  is    no   word   better    than    the    word 

responsibility  to    express   the    feeling  which   the 

„     exercise  of  conscience  draws  out  in  us. 

Conscience  tells 

i^sibiL  And  the  word  responsibility  clearly 
implies  a  superior  power  behind  con- 
science. All  men  feel  that  conscience  makes 
them  responsible.  To  whom  responsible  ?  An 
awful  question.  Is  it  to  society?  Society  has  no 
claim  to  exercise  such  a  judgment.  It  has  no 
such  rights  over  us,  has  conferred  no  such  benefits 
upon  us,  has  no  such  accurate  knowledge  of  what 
we  have  done  compared  with  what  we  could  do, 
as  might  fit  it  to  receive  or  deliver  an  account. 
But  above  all,  society  is  not  the  author  or  giver  of 
that  personal  existence  and  power  in  which  the 
very  character  of  conscience  lies.  Is  it,  then,  to 
ourselves  that  we  are  responsible  ?  The  words 
express  a  great  truth.  But  if  we  are  to  consider 
them  sufficient  to  explain  the  whole  nature  of 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  169 

conscience,  we  must  take  ourselves  as  including 
something  more  than  the  powers  of  our  minds  as 
we  can  understand  them.  The  self  to  which 
conscience  is  responsible  is  more  than  the  mere 
individual.  It  speaks  not  in  the  name  of  the 
individual  alone ;  it  is  self,  but  more  than  self. 
We  feel  that  we  are  put  in  charge  of  ourselves  by 
a  higher  power  and  a  higher  right,  and  conscience 
never  speaks  without  implicitly  reminding  us  of 
this  commission  which  it  holds  from  a  mysterious 
authority  beyond  our  life.  That  we  feel  there  is  a 
tribunal  beyond  ourselves  is  plainly  proved  by  the 
apprehension  of  punishment  which  conscience 
uniformly  displays  when  wrong  has  been  done. 
The  punishment  apprehended  may  clothe  itself  for 
the  imagination  in  various  forms.  It  may  consist 
in  bodily  tortures  feared  in  the  next  world  ;  it  may 
be  temporal  chastisements  in  this  life  ;  it  may  be 
of  a  more  spiritual  character,  and  consist  in  afflic- 
tions of  soul  or  the  sense  of  divine  disapproval, 
whether  here  or  hereafter.  But  one  of  these  as 
much  as  the  other  is  punishment,  and  implies  a 
superhuman  power  which  inflicts  the  penalty.  We 
can  see  in  the  very  nature  of  conscience  itself 
that  mystical  element  which  explains  the  close 


1 70  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

alliance  between  it  and  religion,  to  which  history 
uniformly  testifies.  Upon  any  theory  of  morality 
which  is  capable  of  engendering  life  or  enthusiasm 
there  must  be  the  recognition  of  a  moral  ideal 
floating  before  the  mind.  It  must  be  a  standard 
higher  than  anything  which  the  life  has  yet 
realised,  something  which  has  never  presented 
itself  to  the  senses  or  the  intellect.  Yet,  though 
it  be  an  ideal,  it  must  possess  such  reality  that  we 
feel  it  would  be  death  to  miss  it.  And  it  is  futile 
to  doubt  the  assistance  which  is  imparted  to 
morality  when  this  ideal  is  invested  with  the  truth 
which  religion  gives  to  it,  and  conscience  sees  itself 
embodied  in  a  divine  being,  the  fountain  of  all 
morality. 

61.  This   in  the  sphere   of   morals   is  the  very 
same   demand   which  the  sense  of  our  own  per- 
sonality    makes     in     the    sphere    of 

Our  personality 

demands  a      thought    and    existence.      The    con- 

personal  God, 

our  moral  nature  sciousness    of    our    own    personality 

a  moral  God. 

demands  that  we  trace  it  up  to  a  cause 
and  find  the  source  of  ourselves  in  a  personal 
being  above  us.  And  the  nature  of  conscience 
demands  that  we  trace  up  its  warnings  and  its 
work  to  a  cause,  and  regard  it  as  the  voice  of  a 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  171 

moral  being  above  us.  The  closest  connexion 
exists  between  these  two  analogies.  The  relation- 
ship of  the  terms  consciousness  and  conscience, 
which  are  in  fact  but  forms  of  the  same  word, 
testifies  to  the  fact  that  it  is  in  the  action  of 
conscience  that  man's  consciousness  of  himself 
is  chiefly  experienced.  His  consciousness  might 
remain  apathetic  and  lifeless  enough  ;  it  might 
never  lead  him  up  to  its  divine  source,  or  if  it 
did,  that  God  to  whom  it  led  him  might  be  a 
mere  stranger  uninterested  in  him  and  uninterest- 
ing to  him,  if  it  were  not  that  conscience  presses 
it  on  him  as  matter  of  awful  importance  that  he 
should  guide  his  personal  life  so  as  to  obtain  the 
approval  of  this  higher  personality  in  whom  it  has 
its  origin.  But  we  want  not  only  God's  approval 
but  God's  help.  And  He  reveals  Himself  to  us 
as  not  only  the  source  of  the  personal  life  of  which 
we  are  conscious  and  of  the  character  and  aim  of 
personal  life  which  is  revealed  to  us  in  conscience, 
but  also  as  the  abiding  source  of  life  and  activity 
both  in  consciousness  and  in  conscience.  He  has 
in  Himself  the  life  which  He  gives  to  ourselves. 
And  as  our  conscience  bids  ourselves  to  live,  but 
not  to  live  for  self,  .we.  recognise  in  God  self- 


1 72   MAN'S  KNO  W LEDGE  OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD . 

existence,  but  not  existence  for  self  alone.  He 
bids  us  love  and  must  be  love  Himself.  And  in 
Him  our  personality  finds  its  freedom  from  slavery 
to  the  natural  world  and  its  true  character  of 
complete  self-assertion  mixed  with  complete  self- 
abnegation.  I  live,  yet  not  I,  but  Christ  liveth 
in  me. 


V. 

WE   KNOW   GOD   IN   NATURE   AND   MAN. 

"  And  God  said,  Let  us  make  man  in  our  image,  after  our  likeness  : 
and  let  them  have  dominion  over  the  fish  of  the  sea,  and  over  the 
fowl  of  the  air,  and  over  the  cattle,  and  over  all  the  earth." — GEN. 
1.26. 

62.  WHATEVER  has  been  urged  in  the  preceding 
pages  has  depended  upon  one  principle :  that 
in  man's  self,  and  in  the  essential  part  Recapitulation. 
of  self  which  constitutes  man  a  person,  there  is  a 
mystery.  There  is  a  fact,  a  reality,  a  power,  which 
cannot  be  explained  to  the  mind.  It  cannot  be 
connected  with  anything  in  nature,  nor  can  it  be 
shown  capable  of  arising  through  natural  causes; 
yet  its  existence  cannot  be  ignored  by  any  one 
who  lives. 

The  belief  that  our  personality  is  not  compre- 
hensible to  us  as  part  of  the  system  of  nature 
does  not  at  all  imply  any  attempt  to  except 


174  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 


man,  or  any  part  of  man's  constitution,  from  the 
range  of  natural  science.  On  the  contrary,  the 
whole  force  of  the  argument  depends  upon  the 
fearless  application  of  the  methods  of  natural 
science  to  every  part  of  man's  bodily  and  mental 
life.  For  after  we  have  discovered  how  complete 
is  the  dominion  of  physical  causation  in  both 
the  body  and  mind  of  man;  when  the  line  of 
material  connexion  recognised  in  the  inanimate 
world  and  in  the  lower  creation  has  been  also 
proved  to  include  man's  nervous  system,  and  to 
make  his  feelings  and  acts  as  truly  links  in  the 
chain  as  are  the  winds  and  the  tides  ;  when 
motives  and  impressions  of  the  mind  are  found 
to  be  the  counterpart  and  accompaniment  in  the 
mental  sphere  of  material  contact  in  the  bodily, 
and  to  follow  their  own  laws  of  causation  just 
as  inexorably  and  as  regularly  as  motion  follows 
upon  impulse  in  the  world  of  matter — then  these 
acknowledged  principles  and  the  unrestricted 
application  which  we  make  of  them  bring  into 
its  true  prominence  the  fact  that  they  do  not 
account  for  all.  If  there  were  any  parts  of 
•the  body  or  mind  of  man  to  which  we  refused 
to  apply  the  laws  of  matter  and  motion  and  the 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  175 

corresponding  laws  of  mental  motive  there  would 
be  little  mystery  about  the  affair.  Here  would 
be  a  definite  part  of  the  world  either  of  thought 
or  of  matter,  within  which  we  should  know  the 
secret  to  be  hid.  As  of  the  source  of  some  great 
river,  we  should  know,  if  not  where  and  what  it 
is,  at  least  within  what  limits  it  must  lie. 

But  now  the  whole  region  has  been  searched 
through,  and  the  source  cannot  be  discovered. 
We  find  the  river  running  at  the  furthest  point 
to  which  we  can  reach.  No  anatomy  either  of 
the  body  or  of  the  mind,  though  practised  with- 
out any  restraint  upon  the  whole  of  human  nature, 
has  made  any  advance  towards  showing  us  how 
or  whence  the  sense  of  personality  and  the  in- 
delible conviction  of  the  freedom  of  the  will 
come  to  us.  We  cannot  understand  how  man, 
if  he  were  indeed  a  mere  link  in  the  chain  of 
physical  causes,  should  possess  such  a  sense. 
And  even  though  we  were  to  believe  that  to 
some  higher  intelligence,  nature  with  its  law,  and 
personality  with  its  freedom,  might  fall  into  one 
system,  that  does  not  make  it  possible  for  us  to 
unite  them.  We  are  what  we  are,  and  have  no 
faculties  but  our  own  wherewith  to  discern  truth 


i;5  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

and  reality.  For  us  it  is  as  impossible  to  unite  as 
it  is  impossible  to  disengage  the  bodily  and  material 
from  the  spiritual.  But  though  personality  or 
will  in  itself  cannot  be  discovered,  yet  the  effects 
of  it  and  man's  conviction  that  he  possesses  it  are 
to  be  seen  wherever  he  lives  or  works.  Neither 
man  nor  man's  world  would  be  what  they  are  if 
his  personality  and  his  free  will  were  not  parts 
of  his  consciousness,  of  which  it  is  impossible 
for  him  to  divest  himself  for  a  moment.  His 
intercourse  with  his  fellow  men  would  be  some- 
thing of  a  wholly  different  character  from  what 
it  is  if  he  had  not  the  conviction  that  they  too 
are  persons.  He  cannot  prove  it  of  them  ;  he 
cannot  see  it  in  them.  But  when  he  behaves  to 
them  as  if  they  were  persons,  he  finds  everything 
fit  the  presumption,  and  if  he  behaves  to  them 
as  if  they  were  not,  all  his  own  life  and  all 
theirs  become  degraded. 

We  have  seen  that  the  mystery  of  human  life 
and  human  intercourse  has  always  led  men  to 
religion.  The  very  knowledge  that  there  is 
something  in  our  being  which  must  ever  remain 
mysterious  to  us  is  in  itself  a  kind  of  religion  ;  but 
much  more  when  we  consider  that  this  mysterious 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  177 

part  of  our  nature  is  that  which  is  the  source  of  all 
personal  life  and  action  in  us  ;  and  that  along  with 
personal  life  and  action  there  comes  to  us  an  im- 
perious direction  to  make  life  and  action  moral. 
These  are  the  experiences  of  every  one.  And 
they  are  inexplicable  except  on  the  supposition 
of  a  divine  agent  who  makes  us  what  we  are  and 
requires  of  us  what  we  ought  to  do. 

63.  Now  in  speaking  thus  we  have  been  regard- 
ing the  personality  of  man  and  his  moral  powers 
as  powers  and  forces  separate  from 

Fourth  step. 

nature,  and  capable  of  being  entirely     Man  must  be 

J         regarded  not 

distinguished  from  everything  in  nature.  se  °^t^^om 
And  this  they  certainly  are  and  have  nature>buti"his 

*  *  connexion  with 

ever  been  felt  to  be.  Although  self  and  '  nature  ; 
the  will  by  which  self  acts  are  mysteries,  that  does 
not  in  the  least  imply  that  there  is  any  doubt  about 
the  existence  of  self.  We  know  not  what  it  is  in 
itself,  but  we  know  that  it  is.  It  has  a  separate 
existence  of  its  own  so  far  as  anything  can  be  said 
to  have  a  separate  existence  :  and  this  is  a  necessary 
qualification,  for  nothing  can  be  conceived  as  exist- 
ing in  absolute  separation  from  other  things.  We 
cannot  name  anything  or  even  conceive  it  without 
thereby  distinguishing  it  from  other  things  and 


UNIVERSITY 


1 78  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

implying  its  relation  to  them  ;  its  existence  implies 
theirs.  But  the  relation  of  self  to  nature  is  one 
of  distinction  and  of  opposition. 

Yet  we  cannot  make  the  slightest  attempt  at 
grasping  the  notion  of  this  central  person  and  will 
of  man  without  thinking  of  it  as  working  upon 
nature  and  matter.  The  self-consciousness  of  man 
is  that  which  enables  him  to  think  of  himself; 
but  he  cannot  think  without  employing  both 
mental  and  physical  powers  which  are  part  of  the 
system  of  nature.  It  is  the  will  of  man  which 
enables  him  to  act.  But  he  cannot  act  without 
putting  himself  into  relations  with  the  material 
world,  even  from  the  very  earliest  moment  of  the 
action  which  observation  or  thought  can  trace. 
These  are  the  strange  and  wonderful  conditions 
under  which  self  exists  and  works. 

We  find  ourselves  obliged  to  attribute  to  our 
personal  self  a  kind  of  originating  or  creative 
power.  In  every  moment  of  life  and  action,  and 
in  every  operation  of  the  will,  there  is  to  our 
consciousness  a  kind  of  new  beginning  of  life 
unfettered  and  unattached  to  anything  that  has 
gone  before.  It  is  true  that  when  we  inquire 
and  reflect,  we  find  that  as  the  matter  presents 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  179 

itself  to  thought,  this  is  not  at  all  the  case,  but 
that  everything  we  desire  and  everything  we  do 
seems  bound  by  the  strictest  ties  of  causation  to  the 
external  course  of  things,  and  could  not  be  what 
it  is  if  they  were  in  any  wise  different.  But  this 
conclusion  is  the  result  of  reflection  and  inquiry ; 
it  passes  as  a  theory  into  our  minds,  but  it  does 
not  form  part  of  the  consciousness  which  we  use 
in  action  and  in  life.  For  these,  life  is  taken  up 
anew  at  every  moment ;  the  will  has  the  initiative, 
and  an  act  of  will  is  the  very  first  step  in  every 
act  of  life.  But  the  will  cannot  take  one  step 
forward,  no,  not  so  much  as  to  make  its  own 
existence  perceived,  without  finding  itself  involved 
with  the  world.  The  world  is  its  necessary  in- 
strument. 

The  world  is  not  a  tractable  instrument,  and 
the  relations  in  which  the  will  stands  to  it  are 
distant  if  not  of  an  unfriendly  character.  The 
world  has  its  own  laws  and  it  entirely  declines 
to  be  made  the  instrument  of  the  will,  except 
on  the  condition  that  its  laws  are  to  be  strictly 
obeyed.  It  yields  itself  to  man's  use  only  with 
absolute  reservation  of  all  its  own  rights,  and  it 
never  forgets  even  one  moment  to  assert  them  ; 

N    2 


i8o  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

so  that  when  an  action  is  analysed  in  which 
human  will  has  come  into  play,  it  is  entirely 
impossible  to  separate  the  elements  of  will  and 
of  natural  law  from  each  other,  and  say  that  so 
much  was  due  to  the  will  and  so  much  to  the 
law.  The  will  and  the  law  work  together,  in- 
extricably bound  to  one  another  all  through  the 
action. 

This  is  the  condition  of  human  life  :  so  we  must 
think  in  order  to  live.  If  we  were  to  surrender 
the  notion  that  we  possess  wills  capable  of  influen- 
cing the  world,  our  life  would  come  to  a  standstill. 
We  should  wait  for  nature  to  move  us  instead 
of  taking  the  initiative  ourselves.  But  we  are 
widely  mistaken  if  we  dream  of  the  possibility 
of  making  even  the  very  slightest  movement 
towards  any  work,  not  to  say  of  carrying  any 
work  into  effect,  without  so  exactly  submitting 
to  the  laws  of  nature  that  everything  we  do  shall 
be  capable  of  being  described  as  their  work.  And 
this  we  cannot  understand.  Besides  the  original 
impossibility  of  comprehending  what  these  selves 
of  which  we  have  so  intimate  a  consciousness 
are  in  themselves,  and  how  they  come  to  exist, 
there  is  also  another  difficulty  amounting  to  an 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  181 

impossibility  in  comprehending  why  they  connect 
themselves  with  the  world  of  matter  and  the 
laws  of  nature,  and  whence  arises  this  extraordinary 
relation  of  mingled  mastery  and  slavery,  or  rather 
complete  mastery  combined  with  complete  slavery 
and  how  it  is  to  be  described. 

64.  When  we  find  ourselves  obliged  to  seek  an 
antecedent  cause  for  our  personality  and  our  will 
we  cannot  satisfy  the  conditions  of  Andthiscon. 
the  problem  by  believing  in  an  in- 
comprehensible  Being,  a  mystery  in 
Himself,  corresponding  to  that  mys- 
terious self  within  us  of  which  He  is  the  source. 
For  it  belongs  to  the  very  nature  of  this  self 
within  us,  that  incomprehensible  as  it  is  in  itself 
it  is  capable  of  placing  itself  in  relations  to  nature 
and  the  laws  of  nature,  and  proving  its  existence 
and  its  power  without  any  infringement  of  them. 
We  shall  not  have  found  a  true  cause  of  our 
personality  unless  we  have  found  a  cause  capable 
of  accounting  for  this  essential  character  of  it,  that 
in  some  fashion  as  mysterious  as  its  own  being 
it  is  capable  of  existing  and  of  acting  in  a  world 
the  laws  of  which  seem  to  leave  no  room  for 
either  its  existence  or  its  action. 


1 82  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

The  operations  of  the  human  will  in  the  world 
have  very  often  been  used  as  an  illustration  or 
parallel  for  those  of  the  will  of  God.  When  men 
have  argued  against  the  possibility  of  miracle  on 
the  ground  of  the  uniformity  of  natural  laws,  it 
has  been  replied  that  the  uniformity  of  natural 
laws  does  not  prevent  the  human  will  from  making 
many  changes  in  the  world  and  causing  circum- 
stances to  happen  which  the  laws  of  nature  could 
never  have  brought  about  if  will  had  not  inter- 
vened :  while  all  this  is  done  without  infringement 
of  the  laws  of  nature.  Why,  it  is  argued,  should 
not  the  same  on  a  larger  and  more  striking  scale 
be  possible  to  the  will  of  God  ?  And  if  this 
be  possible  to  the  will  of  God,  shall  we  not  have 
miracles — not  indeed  in  that  sense  which  some 
wrongly  attach  to  the  word  miracle,  of  infringe- 
ments of  the  laws  of  nature,  but  in  the  truer 
sense  of  facts  brought  about  in  the  world  by 
such  uses  of  natural  laws  as  are  perfectly  in 
accordance  with  absolute  maintenance  of  them, 
but  yet  would  never  have  been  made  if  will  had 
not  interposed  to  guide  and  direct  the  operations 
of  nature  ? 

But  what  is  now  insisted  on  is  not  the  parallel 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  183 

which  lies  between  the  will  of  man  as  influencing 
nature  consistently  with  her  laws  and  the  will 
of  God  as  doing  the  same ;  but  the  connexion 
of  effect  and  cause  which  exists  between  these 
two  powers.  The  mysterious  and  inscrutable 
personality  of  man,  a  product  which  no  force 
discernible  in  nature  alone  could  have  yielded, 
leads  us  to  a  cause  beyond  nature.  The  power 
which  this  mysterious  human  will  possesses  to 
connect  itself  with  nature  and  to  work  upon 
nature  demands  to  be  accounted  for  also,  and 
mankind  have  found  the  account  of  the  matter 
in  believing  that  man  with  his  personal  will  and 
his  power  of  work  in  the  world  finds  his  origin 
and  cause  in  a  divine  power,  mysterious  and  super- 
natural, like  the  personality  of  man,  but  capable 
also  like  it  of  connexion  with  nature.  The  will 
of  man  moulding  nature  in  conformity  to  natural 
law  gives  us  a  kind  of  model  in  miniature  of  that 
divine  power  in  which  the  whole  wonderful  system 
originates. 

Beyond  a  doubt  this  view  of  things  has  been 
very  operative  in  leading  the  mind  of  man  to  God. 
It  has  operated  not  merely  in  the  form  of  argu- 
ment, but  far  more  widely  in  the  form  of  feeling, 


1 84  MA  N'S  KNO  W LEDGE 

and  has  led  mankind  to  believe  in  a  Being  above 
them,  who  has  given  them  their  powers  to  contend 
with  nature,  and  has  imposed  the  contest  upon 
them  because  this  contest  in  its  human  form 
resembles  and  reproduces  the  relations  which  He 
Himself  holds  to  nature.  Sometimes,  as  in  the 
heathen  religions,  the  subjection  of  man  to  nature 
is  scarcely  more  complete  or  more  degrading  than 
that  under  which  the  gods  also  lie.  Sometimes, 
as  in  the  Jewish  and  Christian  systems,  the 
relations  of  God  to  nature  lose  everything  of 
degradation,  and  become  the  instruments  of  the 
loftiest  command  and  the  most  triumphant  victory. 
Yet  in  both  cases,  and  in  the  latter  not  less  than 
the  former,  we  have  in  the  respective  positions 
of  God  and  the  world  a  kind  of  picture  upon  a 
vaster  scale  of  those  which  man  in  himself 
experiences.  We  have  a  transcendental  and 
mysterious  personality  and  a  will  essentially  free, 
in  inscrutable  connexion  with  a  world  of  matter 
which  has  laws  of  its  own.  And  this  will,  what- 
ever be  the  degree  of  its  power  over  matter,  never 
can  have  any  power  over  it  which  is  perfect  or 
infinite :  for  it  must  ever  be  limited  by  the 
conditions  of  the  material  with  which  it  deals. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  185 

65.  This  way  of  thinking  about  God,  however 
it  be  sanctioned  by  the  authority  of  mankind  in 
general,  is  yet  subject  to  an  imputation  Isthis  anthropo. 
considered  very  formidable  in  modern 
philosophy  :  that  of  anthropomorphism.  We  are 
told  that  to  make  the  human  will  in  its  relations  to 
nature  the  model  of  our  conceptions  of  God  may 
indeed  be  natural  enough,  but  is  a,  primitive  and  a 
savage  belief  which  must  give  way  as  larger  and 
more  scientific  ideas  prevail.  However,  it  does  not 
appear  that  man  and  his  relations  to  nature  are, 
in  the  higher  forms  of  this  faith,  made  any  other- 
wise the  model  of  those  which  are  ascribed  to 
God,  than  as  every  effect  must  give  us  a  kind 
of  model  of  the  cause  to  which  we  attribute  it. 
Although  an  effect  may  be  unlike  its  cause  in  a 
thousand  ways,  yet  there  must  be  so  much  re- 
semblance that  the  cause  shall  contain  in  itself 
the  capacity  for  producing  an  effect  of  this  kind. 
Men  have  therefore  found  it  impossible  to  conceive 
how  a  God  entirely  separate  from  nature,  untouched 
and  uninfluenced  by  any  natural  conditions,  should 
have  given  existence  to  such  beings  as  they  find 
themselves  to  be,  beings  whose  very  essence 
consists  in  this,  that  they  have  an  unknowable 


1 86  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

personality  inextricably  united  with  the  world  of 
things  known.  Further  than  this,  religion  does 
not  pretend  to  assimilate  God  to  man.  Whatever 
tendencies  of  this  kind  the  grosser  forms  of  religion 
evince  have  been  purged  away  in  the  purer ;  and 
we  find  the  prophetic  spokesmen,  both  of  Judaism 
and  Christianity,  exhausting  the  resources  of  lan- 
guage in  order  to  express  their  sense  of  the  height 
at  which  God  stands  above  man,  and  the  essential 
difference  which  exists  between  the  two.  It  is 
acknowledged  that  all  those  human  expressions 
which  we  are  forced  to  make  use  of  in  reference 
to  the  nature  of  God  must  be  extremely  inade- 
quate. Intellect,  Personality,  Will,  not  to  speak 
of  such  terms  as  the  hand  or  the  eye  of  God, 
must  always  fall  short.  They  are  mere  adapt- 
ations to  human  modes  of  thought,  the  necessary 
language  in  which  man  must  be  addressed.  But 
it  must  be  right  in  some  sense,  higher  than  we 
can  understand,  to  apply  these  terms  to  God  : 
else  how  could  He  have  been  the  cause  of  the 
similar  powers  which  they  denote  in  us  ? 

Of  all  the  marks  of  will  and  design  in  the 
world  the  highest  is  the  existence  of  minds  and 
wills  which,  like  those  of  men,  are  themselves 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  187 

capable  of  design.  No  machinery  so  imperatively 
requires  us  to  recognise  the  work  of  a  machinist 
as  the  machinery  which  is  self-acting.  When 
we  find  in  nature  the  most  wonderful  adaptations 
of  means  to  ends,  we  find  ourselves  forced  by  a 
mental  necessity  to  believe  in  some  power  which 
has  known  the  problem  and  dealt  with  it.  We 
see  in  all  such  natural  results  a  guide  to  the 
nature  of  their  cause.  For  instance,  in  Paley's 
celebrated  illustration,  the  watch  is  so  far  a  guide 
to  our  conception  of  the  watchmaker  that  we 
must  believe  in  a  watchmaker  who  had  the  idea 
of  the  watch  and  understood  the  materials  of 
which  it  was  to  be  made,  and  how  to  deal  with 
them  for  the  purpose  in  view.  Where  the  subjects 
in  which  the  design  is  traced  are  themselves 
unconscious  it  may  perhaps  be  possible  to  ascribe 
their  existence  to  unconscious  agency.  But  how 
can  unconscious  agency  produce  conscious  minds 
and  wills  ?  How  could  a  power  itself  absolutely 
separate  from  nature,  deal  with  the  problem  how 
to  construct  personalities  to  rule  in  nature  and 
be  ruled  by  it  ? 

It   will   be   found    that    no   attempts    to   trace 
conscious  personality  to  an  unconscious  cause  can 


1 88  MAWS  KNO  W LEDGE 

ever  be  successful.  If  indeed  personality  and 
consciousness  in  man  be  denied  ;  if  it  be  asserted 
that  whatever  man  may  think,  he  has  no  person- 
ality, but  is  only  a  part  of  nature,  and  that  his 
consciousness  is  not  what  it  seems  but  a  mere 
unessential  addition  to  life,  having  no  influence 
or  power  over  the  real  work  of  living;  then 
we  are  able  to  conceive  man  coming  from  an 
unconscious  cause,  for  he  is  in  that  case  to  all 
real  intents  and  purposes  unconscious  himself. 
But  this  is  not  the  position  which  is  taken  against 
the  personality  of  God.  It  is  acknowledged  that 
consciousness  and  the  idea  of  the  self  possess 
reality  as  a  description  of  man's  nature  ;  but  it 
is  denied  that  we  can  ascribe  them  to  God.  If 
not,  whence  came  they  to  man  ?  A  question  which 
universal  mankind  have  found  it  impossible  to 
answer  without  bringing  God  and  nature  into 
conscious  combination  in  the  making  of  man  as 
the  soul  and  nature  are  consciously  combined  in 
man's  frame  and  constitution. 
Does  it  lead  us  ^6.  There  is  an  objection  from  quite 
to^eddwbhyois  a  different  quarter  to  which  this 
nature?  conception  of  God  is  subject.  If  we 
make  the  human  will  in  its  relations  to  nature 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  189 

the  model  of  our  ideas  of  God  and  His  work 
in  nature,  how  are  we  to  defend  ourselves  against 
the  charge  of  setting  limits  to  the  power  and 
goodness  of  God  ?  Are  we  not  proclaiming  a 
God  of  finite  attributes  who  reflects  that  inability 
to  deal  with  matter  and  the  world  under  which 
man  groans  ?  The  condition  of  the  human  will 
in  relation  to  nature  is  this,  that  it  has  a  wonderful 
independence  of  nature ;  that  it  has  a  power  of 
command  in  nature  which  sets  it  above  all  mere 
natural  forces  ;  that  it  makes  new  beginnings  in 
nature  and  sets  agencies  at  work  which  but  for 
it  would  have  lain  dormant,  but  that  all  the 
time  nature  has  its  own  sphere  and  its  own 
powers,  and  offers  to  the  human  will  an  instru- 
ment whose  conditions  must  be  submitted  to  and 
obeyed. 

Now,  when  we  seek  behind  this  wonderful 
system  of  things  for  a  cause  fitted  to  produce  it, 
we  are  led  to  a  personality,  spiritual  and  separate 
from  nature ;  like  the  personality  of  man  so  far 
as  to  be  its  cause,  and  as  far  raised  above  it  as  the 
originating  cause  must  be  above  any  effect  which 
flows  from  it.  This  divine  source  of  our  personality 
must  have  in  perfection  all  that  we  possess 


1 90  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

imperfectly.  It  must,  therefore,  have  in  an  original 
and  creative  sense  that  relation  to  nature  which 
is  so  essential  a  part  of  our  being.  That  initiative, 
that  power  of  setting  nature  in  motion,  and  deter- 
mining what  law  shall  prevail  and  what  law  shall 
yield,  which  even  we  in  our  small  sphere  can 
claim,  our  Maker  must  have  in  a  degree  infinitely 
higher.  We  have  a  command  over  natural  laws 
which  enables  us  to  influence  and  direct  one  or 
two  of  them,  while  the  rest  of  the  mighty  whole 
calmly  take  their  way  without  our  interference 
and  even  without  our  knowledge.  But  in  Him 
to  whom  we  can  look  as  the  cause  of  all  the  per- 
sonalities of  all  mankind  and  of  the  nature  with 
which  they  stand  connected,  this  relation  to 
natural  laws  must  be  such  as  to  enable  Him  to 
grasp  the  whole  system  in  perfect  knowledge  and 
to  influence  it  when  and  as  He  will.  Even  in  our 
little  life  the  will  holds  a  position  of  superiority 
to  nature.  It  sets  at  work  agencies  which  but  for 
it  never  would  have  operated.  But  in  the  Cause 
of  all,  this  must  pass  into  such  an  absolute  primary 
relation  to  nature,  that  her  laws  issue  from  Him  as 
from  their  first  origin. 

Yet  even  when  we  have  carried  our  faith  so  far 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  191 

as  to  ascribe  to  God  the  creation  of  the  laws  of 
nature,  and  to  say  that  while  we  set  a  few  of  them 
in  motion  they  all  have  their  origin  in  Him,  must 
we  not  ascribe  to  nature  when  once  at  work  a 
certain  independence  of  God  ?  If  His  perfection 
is  to  consist  in  His  possession  to  a  perfect  degree 
of  that  independence  of  nature  in  which  we 
recognise  our  own  personality,  the  same  analogy 
demands  that  nature  shall  be  independent  of  Him. 
For  us  the  two  things  go  together.  Man's  in- 
dependence of  nature  implies  nature's  independ- 
ence of  man.  We  cannot  separate  the  will  of 
man  from  nature  for  the  purpose  of  exalting  him, 
and  then  proceed  to  identify  nature  with  the  will 
of  man  for  the  sake  of  humbling  her.  The  separa- 
tion if  it  exists  at  all  must  be  reciprocal.  And  it 
seems  that  the  same  reasoning  must  needs  apply 
to  God.  Nature  must  be  regarded  as  something 
objective  to  God,  even  as  she  is  to  us.  And  God's 
power  in  nature,  however  high  above  ours,  yet 
must  be  thought  of  as  limited  and  conditioned, 
like  ours,  by  the  conditions  of  the  instruments 
with  which  He  has  to  work. 

And  yet  it  is  not  possible  to  deny  that  such  an 
admission  is  of  necessity  destructive  of  the  attempt 


192  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

to  ascribe  to  God  an  absolute  omnipotence  in 
nature.  But  do  we,  therefore,  recognise  only  a 
God  such  as  Stuart  Mill  was  ready  to  believe  in  ; 
a  being  of  great  though  still  imperfect  power  and 
goodness  ?  That  is  a  theory  which  is  quite  easily 
stated  and  has  no  element  of  mystery  in  it  what- 
ever; but  it  is  not  the  faith  to  which  we  are  led  in 
seeking  a  source  of  our  own  personality  in  its  com- 
bination with  nature.  It  was  natural  that  Stuart 
Mill  should  state  the  matter  so,  for  he  did  not 
believe  in  human  free  will.  But  to  one  who 
apprehends  the  mystery  of  man's  self  as  ruling 
nature  and  being  ruled  by  it,  a  more  mysterious 
deity  is  necessary.  For  there  must,  in  the  first 
place,  be  a  Father  of  spirits,  a  source  of  the  free 
unfettered  will  and  of  the  incomprehensible  self 
which  we  have  within  us ;  and  this  God  cannot 
be  subject  to  conditions  or  limitations.  And  next 
there  must  be  a  God  of  nature  who  must  by  that 
very  fact  be  subject  to  limits  in  His  action.  We 
cannot  wonder  that  the  Gnostic  sects  of  old 
separated  these  two  beings;  for  indeed  the  idea 
of  Deity  is  very  different  in  each.  But  if  we 
separate  the  God  of  spirits  from  the  God  of  nature 
we  have  found  no  solution  for  the  mystery  of 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  193 

man's  constitution,  in  which  free  will  and  natural 
law  stand  in  real  though  mysterious  combination. 
God  must,  therefore,  be  both  transcendental  and 
immanent ;  both  beyond  nature  and  within  it. 

67.  We  cannot  expect  that  God's  being  should 
be  divested  of  mystery  for  us  when  our  own  is 
so  full  of  it.  And  the  mystery  of  it 

The  inexplicable 

consists  in  this,  that  we  must  ascribe  puzzle  offered  by 

the  combination 

perfect  freedom  to  the  God  of  our  spirits ;  of  the  perfection 

of  God  with  the 

and    perfect   freedom   can    be  nothing    imperfection  of 

nature. 

else   but   omnipotence,   since  freedom 
is    plainly  imperfect    wherever  there   is    anything 
which  cannot  be  done.     While  again,  we  must  as- 
cribe to  God  the  power  to  operate  in  the  world, 
which  we   cannot  represent   Him  to  ourselves  as 
doing  without  setting  limits  to   His  infinity,  since 
all    work    in    the    world,   however   vast,  is    finite. 
Our  knowledge  of  God's  infinity,  that   is  to  say 
of  His  independence  of  bounds  and   limits,  is  a 
faith,  just  as  is  our  belief  in  our  own  independence 
of  nature.      But  we  cannot  carry  this  faith   into 
nature  and  ascribe  to  God,  as  so  many  have  been 
ready  to  do,  a  power  of  doing  anything  that  He 
pleases  there.     The  dogma  that  God   can  do  all 
things  is  one  on  which  the  framers  of  theological 

o 


I94  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

systems  have  often  thought  themselves  at  liberty 
to  argue  without  fear  or  restraint.  But  in  fact 
no  action  at  all  in  a  finite  world  can  be  ascribed 
to  any  agent  without  imposing  limits  by  the  very 
conception  of  the  action.  Nor  do  we  ever  find 
in  the  Bible  that  unrestrained  licence  of  inference 
from  the  omnipotence  of  God,  and  its  application 
to  His  work  in  nature,  which  later  systems  display. 
In  the  Bible  many  limits  and  restrictions  found 
in  the  nature  of  things,  in  the  nature  of  man,  in 
the  nature  of  God's  own  dealings,  and  of  the  laws 
which  He  has  established,  come  up  to  qualify  the 
bare  statement  that  God  can  do  all  things. 

68.  There  is  no  doubt  that  this  in- 

But  it  is  a  puzzle 

only  for  the      volves  us  in  a   great   puzzle.     But   it 

intellect. 

is  a  puzzle  which  only  presents  itself 
to  the  intellect.  It  is  hereby  proved  difficult, 
or  even,  let  us  grant,  impossible,  to  frame  a 
system  that  shall  embrace  all  the  truth  about 
God,  man,  and  nature.  But  the  practical  im- 
portance of  such  a  difficulty  rests  upon  the  question 
whether  we  have  any  reason  to  expect  that  we 
should  be  able  to  frame  a  system  that  should 
include  in  perfect  intelligible  harmony  all  that  we 
can  know  of  God,  man,  and  nature.  Now  there 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  195 

seems  to  be  no  reason  why  we  should  presume 
ourselves  entitled  to  expect  any  such  thing.  What 
is  there  in  man's  position  in  the  world  towards  God 
and  towards  nature  to  render  it  likely  that  he 
would  be  able  to  divest  his  faith  of  mystery  ? 
There  is  one  overwhelming  argument  against 
putting  forward  any  such  demand  :  that  he 
cannot  get  rid  of  mystery  in  the  very  make  of 
his  own  being.  We,  who  cannot  understand  our- 
selves, have  but  little  reason  to  fancy  that  we 
can  understand  God.  But  since  our  want  of  under- 
standing in  our  own  life  is  no  bar  to  our  faith  in  the 
two  irreconcilable  opposites,  human  personality  and 
natural  law,  a  similar  inability  to  understand  the 
reconciliation  of  God's  infinity  with  the  bounds  of 
nature  cannot  be  fatal  to  our  belief  in  a  Divine 
Person  as  well  as  in  physical  causation. 

69.  The  extreme  instance  of  the  mystery  of  God 
and  nature  is  found  in  the  existence  of 

evil.       That    awful     fact    shoWS    US     that      existence  of  evil 

.  gives  us  a  God 

nature,  and  God  s  action  in  nature,  do      who  has  the 

same  enemies 

not  reach  even   to    the    standard   of   thatwehaveto 

contend  with. 

limited  goodness  which  nature  enables 

us  to  conceive,  and  which  she  partly  realises.    One 

hesitates  to  say  that  the  problem  offered  by  the 

O    2 


1 96  MAWS  KNO  WLEDGE 

existence  of  evil  is  only  one  for  the  intellect  and 
not  also  for  the  soul  :  or  that  the  difficulty  under 
which  it  places  us  is  but  the  difficulty  of  framing 
a  consistent  and  complete  theory.  But  this  at 
least  is  true  :  that  the  connexion  of  a  perfect 
Being  with  an  evil  world  is  the  counterpart  of  that 
bondage  of  the  spirit  to  the  world  and  the  flesh 
which  we  experience  in  ourselves.  And  accord- 
ingly, though  evil  under  a  good  God  be  a  terrible 
fact,  yet  it  is  far  from  setting  God  out  of  sympathy 
with  us.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  this  struggle  with 
evil  carried  on  by  Him  as  well  as  by  man  that  alone 
enables  us  to  sympathize  truly  with  Him,  or  Him  to 
feel  for  us.  Sympathy  with  the  aim  and  intention 
of  the  Author  of  the  world,  and  with  the  signs  of 
that  intention  which  are  to  be  discerned  in  the 
progress  of  the  world,  is  the  only  moral  principle 
which  can  lift  man  above  selfish  considerations 
and  make  him  yield  himself  to  God.  Thus  only 
can  we  extend  to  the  whole  morality  of  life  that 
loving  and  self-forgetful  interest  in  the  battle 
which  another  is  fighting,  in  which  every  man 
who  has  a  heart  finds  his  strongest  motive  to  help 
his  brethren  in  the  human  sphere.  Without  this 
sympathy  for  the  aims  of  the  government  of  the 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  197 

universe  we  become  the  subjects  of  a  lifeless 
despotism  instead  of  free  citizens  under  a 
fatherly  rule. 

70.  We  need  have  the  less  hesitation  in  main- 
taining the  moral  power  of  sympathy  with  the  de- 
signs of  God  since  we  find  it  asserted  And  the  feellng 
even  in  the  most  unexpected  quarters. 
The  authors  of  systems  which  might 
seem  deliberately  framed  to  set  the  relisioussystems- 
First  Cause  of  the  universe  at  an  inaccessible 
distance  from  the  souls  of  men,  and  to  make 
fellow-feeling  between  them  impossible  and  even 
inconceivable,  have  been  driven  in  the  support  of 
morality  to  assert  that  we  can  discern  in  things 
a  purpose  on  the  part  of  their  Author  with  which 
we  are  able  heartily  to  sympathise.  Thus  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  in  a  passage  of  The  Data  of 
Ethics,  which  amounts  to  a  total  surrender  of 
agnosticism  as  a  moral  system  :  "  If  for  the  Divine 
Will,  supposed  to  be  supernaturally  revealed,  we 
substitute  the  naturally  revealed  end  towards  which 
the  Power  manifested  through  evolution  works : 
then  since  evolution  has  been  and  is  still  working 
towards  the  highest  life,  it  follows  that  conforming  to 
those  principles  by  which  the  highest  life  is  achieved 


198  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

is  furthering  that  end."1  A  power  which  makes 
its  ends  known  to  us  (whether  naturally  or  super- 
naturally  is  not  the  question),  and  whose  ends  may 
be  furthered  (and  by  implication  may  also  be 
hindered)  by  what  we  do,  is  not  an  unknowable 
power,  but  a  living  God,  with  whose  advancing 
purpose  carried  on  against  opposing  powers 
throughout  the  history  of  the  world  and  of  man, 
we  are  here  asked  to  sympathise  and  co-operate. 

Von  Hartmann  does  not  indeed  offer  to  our  faith 
an  unknowable  Power  but  an  All  One,  known  to 
be  unconscious.  One  would  think  that  uncon- 
sciousness must  set  the  All  One  still  more  effec- 
tually out  of  reach  of  sympathy  than  Mr.  Spencer's 
creed  sets  the  Unknowable  :  since  we  might  guess 
that  an  Unknowable  may  perhaps  care  what  we  do, 
but  must  feel  certain  that  an  Unconscious  cannot 
care  either  about  that  or  anything  else.  It  would 
not  however  suit  the  maintainers  of  Pessimism  to 
admit  this.  For  as  it  is  their  gloomy  faith  that 
the  world,  and  especially  human  life,  brings  more 
evil  than  good,  and  had  better  never  have  existed, 
it  is  plain  that  they  can  find  no  argument  for  living 
at  all,  not  to  say  for  moral  living,  within  the 

1  Data  of  Ethics,  p.  171. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  199 

known  and  conscious  world.  And  if  no  argu- 
ment can  be  brought  from  beyond  the  conscious 
world  we  shall  be  bound  in  reason  either  to 
actual  suicide,  or  to  that  practical  suicide  which 
consists  in  living  we  care  not  how  :  and  one  of  the 
first  duties  of  man,  if  any  duties  he  has,  will 
consist  in  abstaining  from  propagating  a  race,  the 
existence  of  which  brings  more  harm  than  good 
to  itself  and  to  everything  else.  Von  Hartmann 
must  save  himself  from  a  conclusion  singularly 
open  to  Strauss's  taunt,  that  if  the  prophets  of 
Pessimism  prove  that  man  had  better  never  have 
lived  they  thereby  prove  that  themselves  had 
better  never  have  prophesied.  Accordingly  the 
last  reason  by  which  Pessimism  can  urge  us  to 
live  morally  or  even  live  at  all  is  found  in  our 
sympathy  with  the  Unconscious  in  the  efforts  and 
struggles  after  a  perfect  reconciliation  of  will  and 
idea;  to  which  struggles  (singularly  unsuccessful 
as  they  seem  to  have  hitherto  been)  this  poor 
world  owes  its  origin  and  maintenance.  This  is 
the  moral  principle 1  fetched  from  beyond  the 

1  Von  Hartmann,  Philosophy  of  the  Unconscious,  vol.  iii.  p.  133 
(English  translation).  "  Practical  philosophy  and  life  require  a 
positive  standpoint,  and  this  is  the  complete  devotion  of  the  per- 
sonality to  the  world-process  for  the  sake  of  its  goal,  the  general 


200  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

sphere  of  consciousness  which  is  to  counter- 
balance the  Pessimism  of  the  world  we  know. 
But  it  is  one  of  the  plainest  things  possible  that 
by  the  hypothesis  which  assigns  to  the  Divinity 
the  title  of  Unconscious,  we  are  precluded  from 
having  any  sympathy  with  it.  We  cannot  em- 
brace a  cloud  nor  yet  feel  for  a  stone.  We  can 
have  sympathy  only  with  the  living  God,  as  the 
Bible  is  so  fond  of  calling  Him :  with  a  God 
whose  relations  to  nature  present  that  strange 
union  of  command  and  submission  in  which  life 
as  we  understand  it  consists. 

71.  In  every  religion  which  has  ever   obtained 
any  prevalence  among   mankind  this 

It  works  also  in 

aii  great        mysterious    opposition   between    God 

religions,  but 

chiefly  in        and  the  world  appears.     In  some  cases 

Christianity. 

it   is    God    in    His    inscrutable  being 
that   seems   chiefly  to  occupy  the  scene.     There 

world-redemption.  Otherwise  expressed,  the  principle  of  practical 
philosophy  consists  in  this,  to  make  the  ends  of  the  Unconscious  ends 
of  our  own  consciousness  ;  which  follows  immediately  from  the  two 
premises,  that  in  the  first  place  consciousness  has  made  the  goal 
of  the  world-redemption  from  the  misery  of  volition  its  own  goal,  and 
secondly  that  it  has  the  persuasion  of  the  wisdom  of  the  Unconscious, 
in  consequence  of  which  it  recognizes  all  the  means  made  use  of  by 
the  Unconscious  as  the  most  suitable  possible,  even  if  in  the  special 
case  it  should  be  inclined  to  harbour  doubts  thereon." — See  the 
clever  work  of  Mr.  Barlow,  F.T.C.D.,  entitled  The  Ultimatum 
of  Pessimism. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  201 

is  a  shrinking  from  bringing  Him  into  contact 
with  the  world,  and  a  tendency  to  find  Him 
through  mystical  contemplation.  Such  is  the 
spirit  of  the  great  Oriental  faiths  :  yet  however 
far  they  put  back  God  from  the  world,  He  must 
at  some  point  touch  it,  or  man  can  have  no 
dealings  with  Him.  Incarnations  and  earthly 
symbols  bring  down  the  divine  nature  to  contact 
with  material  things,  and  for  the  mass  of  wor- 
shippers the  deity  in  Himself  vanishes  wholly 
from  view  behind  these  mundane  forms.  In  the 
classical  systems  the  earthly  and  human  side  of 
religion  forms  the  first  thought,  and  the  nearest 
to  the  mind  :  but  behind  it  is  always  dimly  felt 
the  consciousness  of  a  deeper  mystery  in  the 
nature  of  God.  But  while  the  mystery  lurks 
in  every  religion,  the  character  of  Christianity  is 
that  there  is  no  shrinking  from  the  full  recognition 
of  it.  There  is  no  attempt  to  set  God  apart  from 
the  world,  or  to  represent  Him  as  incapable  of 
subjection  to  the  world's  laws.  It  accepts  the 
conditions  in  the  most  absolute  form,  and  by 
a  wonderful  union  of  opposites,  which  human 
powers  could  never  have  invented,  it  presents  God 
as  living  among  men  and  for  men,  exercising  His 


202  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

omnipotence  for  their  salvation,  but  only  through 
a  perfection  of  obedience  and  submission  to  the 
conditions  of  life  and  death  which  was  unat- 
tainable to  them.  And  all  this  without  ever 
lowering  the  spiritual  mystery  of  God's  being, 
or  ceasing  to  place  Him  above  us  even  while  He 
lives  and  works  beside  us. 

Here  is  sympathy  with  God  made  truly  possible 
to  us  through  perfection  of  sympathy  in  Him  for 
us.  This  is  the  completion  of  that  union  of 
our  nature  with  God  which  is  commenced  by  our 
creation  in  His  image.  We  were  subjected  by  Him 
to  vanity,  as  S.  Paul  expresses  the  incomprehensible 
slavery  of  spiritual  beings  to  a  material  world.  But 
here  is  fulfilled  to  us  the  "  hope "  which  the 
apostle  finds  in  our  subjection,  instead  of  seeing 
in  it  as  others  do  the  despairing  certainty  that 
we  are  enslaved  for  ever,  and  that  no  true  mastery 
can  ever  come  of  our  wrestling  with  nature  and 
her  awful  powers. 
Religion  meets  72.  But  all  of  this  kind  that  can  be 

a  natural  want  in 

man  which  a      said  is  but  a  necessarily  imperfect  at- 

habit  of  question- 

ing  may  duii,  as    tempt  to    reproduce  in  reflection   the 

it  does  other  .  . 

human  affections,  nature  of  that  attraction   of    religion 
for  man  which  in  all  ages  he  has  spontaneously 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  203 

felt.  The  more  one  regards  this  universal 
attraction,  the  more  one  doubts  whether  its  signi- 
ficance has  been  grasped  by  our  men  of  science. 
Cultivated  in  intellect  to  the  highest  point,  such 
men  find  religion  too  high  and  difficult  for  their 
acceptance — it  lies  beyond  them.  They  protest 
that  after  searching  the  universe  with  their  obser- 
vations, calculating  its  forces  with  their  under- 
standing, and  feeling  all  the  sentiments  of  wonder 
and  admiration  which  it  is  fitted  to  excite,  they 
do  not  find  God.  Could  one  have  supposed  that 
beliefs  too  mystical  for  the  cultivated  would  have 
been  found  welcome  to  the  common  mind,  bound 
down  to  what  can  be  seen  and  touched  ?  If  indeed 
religion  had  consisted  in  earthly  observances,  and 
depended  upon  natural  terrors,  we  might  not 
have  thought  its  prevalence  so  strange  :  but  it  is 
certain  that  if  religion  had  relied  only  upon  these 
material  influences  it  would  soon  have  been  trodden 
down  and  lost  in  the  crush  and  struggle  for  exist- 
ence. Men  do  not  show  themselves  so  obstinate 
in  retaining  even  the  best  founded  fears,  as  for 
instance  that  of  death ;  nor  in  practising  any 
earthly  observances  which  cannot  show  their 
practical  utility  in  the  most  undeniable  form. 


204  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

How  comes  it  then  that  they  have  so  universally 
believed  a  religion  ?  How  comes  it  that  re- 
ligion, instead  of  showing  itself  in  highly  cultivated 
minds  and  being  lost  in  those  of  the  vulgar  and 
the  unimaginative,  is  far  more  apt  to  display  the 
contrary  characteristics  ?  Millions  who  are  bound 
within  the  narrower  circles  of  knowledge  and  senti- 
ment have  agreed  to  feel  after  God  and  to  find  Him  ; 
while  the  cultivated  few  seem  often  to  lose  both  the 
longing  after  Him  and  the  power  to  discern  Him. 

Explanations  of  this  fact,  very  flattering  to  the 
superiority  of  the  philosophic  mind,  may  doubtless 
be  offered.  But  there  is  an  explanation,  not  so 
tender  to  the  pride  of  intellect,  sufficient  to 
account  for  the  phenomena :  that  there  is  an 
essential  fitness  in  religion  for  meeting  an  original 
capacity  and  want  in  the  mind  of  man,  which  grows 
dull  through  the  exclusive  pursuit  of  science.  This 
capacity  and  want  it  may  be  impossible  to  prove 
or  to  explain :  it  is  impossible  to  prove  or  to 
explain  any  of  the  essential  tendencies  of  human 
nature.  And  it  may  become  dull  and  vanish  from 
view  when  the  mind  assumes  an  attitude  of  per- 
sistent questioning:  this  is  the  case  with  all  the 
affections,  even  the  most  undeniable  and  essential. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  205 

All  the  affections  grow  dull  in  individuals,  and 
even  in  whole  classes  and  generations,  which  are  in- 
tellectually cultivated  to  an  abnormal  degree.  If 
we  desire  to  test  or  understand  the  natural  force  of 
any  of  the  original  affections  we  must  assume  an 
attitude  of  faith  and  feeling,  or  study  the  pheno- 
mena in  those  to  whom  such  an  attitude  is  possible. 
And  the  defenders  of  religion  must  not  be  accused 
of  disrespect  to  the  intellect,  if  they  believe  that  an 
incapacity  of  the  intellect  may  exist  in  religion  to  the 
same  extent  and  for  the  same  reason  that  it  exists 
in  regard  to  the  affections.  When  we  attempt  to 
describe  any  of  our  affections  or  tastes,  we  are 
ever  conscious  that  we  have  failed.1  The  fervour 
and  reality  of  it  exhale  and  vanish  as  we  try 
to  describe  it,  for  the  attitude  of  our  mind  in 
reflection  and  in  statement,  like  that  of  our  hearer's 
in  listening  and  judging,  is  entirely  different 
from  that  of  feeling  and  acting.  If  he  should 
be  unsympathising  and  sceptical,  he  will  be 
able  to  prove  to  his  own  perfect  satisfaction  that 

I  cannot  teach 

My  hand  to  hold  my  spirit  so  far  off 
From  myself — me — that  I  should  bring  thee  proof 
In  words  of  love  hid  in  me  out  of  reach. 

E.  B.  BROWNING,  Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese. 


205  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

the  feeling  and  its  object  were  imaginary  and 
unnecessary  ;  and  he  is  likely  enough  to  be  able 
to  persuade  us  that  his  view  of  the  case  is  just. 
And  even  should  he  sympathise  to  the  highest 
possible  degree,  the  intellectual  reproduction  will 
be  but  a  cold  and  unreal  image  of  a  feeling  which 
was  real  and  rested  upon  a  true  object. 

73.  We  have  found  ourselves  obliged  to  confess 
that  our  knowledge  of  man  as  a  person  rests,  like 
Fifth  step.  The  ^ese  tastes  and  affections,  upon  an 
^t—  intuition  which  can  be  recognised  and 

everywhere.        accepted    by  the    mjnd>  but  nof.  provec] 

to  a  doubter,  and  which  it  is  easy  to  disbelieve. 
But  the  light  vanishes  out  of  life  when  we 
disbelieve  it :  for  though  our  intercourse  with 
the  beauty  and  variety  of  things  is  a  source  of 
high  delight  to  us,  yet  by  itself  it  does  not  satisfy 
the  soul.  It  leads  up  to  communion  with  man, 
and  without  this  all  is  imperfect.  In  personal 
communion  all  other  communion  finds  its  comple- 
tion, and  the  want  of  it  is  capable  of  depriving 
every  beauty  which  the  rest  of  the  world  can  offer 
of  its  charm.  Imagination,  indeed,  endows  the 
trees  and  flowers  and  the  lovely  scenes  of  nature 
with  personality :  they  seem  to  speak  to  us  and  to 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  207 

be  partakers  in  what  we  feel.  But  this  is  only 
imagination,  and  it  could  never  have  been  felt, 
or,  if  felt,  been  sustained,  unless  the  longing  after 
personal  communion  had  been  fed  by  constant 
contact  with  those  beings  who  have  in  reality  the 
wondrous  character  which  is  only  imagined  in 
nature.  If  a  man  be  really  set  in  permanence 
apart  from  his  fellow-men,  nature  loses  its  person- 
ality and  therewith  its  charm.  The  same  is  true 
of  the  lower  animals.  We  make  friends  of  them, 
and  it  sometimes  seems  as  if  they  were  almost 
human  ;  yet  they  are  not  so,  and  we  could  not 
imagine  them  to  be  so  if  the  true  personal 
intercourse  which  we  can  have  with  man  did  not 
constantly  sustain  the  idea  within  us.  We  are 
always  calling  our  dogs  and  other  animal  favourites 
by  human  names,  addressing  to  them  sentences  of 
human  language  and  otherwise  treating  them  as  if 
they  were  human  beings,  to  an  extent  which,  as  we 
are  perfectly  well  aware,  is  unwarranted  by  what 
we  know  of  their  real  mental  constitution. 

This  desire  to  add  personality  to  every  kind  of 
pleasure  is  testified  by  our  constant  wish  to  share 
with  other  human  minds  the  delight  which  we 
have  in  the  world.  To  be  able  to  enjoy  beautiful 


208  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

scenery  or  intercourse  with  favourite  animals 
alone  and  solitary,  is  unnatural  and  when  it  occurs 
we  count  it  at  least  an  eccentricity.  The  natural 
habit  is  that  you  should  never  enjoy  any  external 
thing  thoroughly  and  completely  unless  you  have 
some  friend  by  your  side  to  enjoy  it  with  you. 
Wordsworth  seemed  to  delight  in  solitary  com- 
munion with  nature,  but  it  was  only  that  he  might 
devise  the  forms  of  thought  and  expression  by 
which  he  should  call  a  thousand  readers  to  share 
his  delight.  And  if  nature  seems  sometimes  to 
afford  us  a  welcome  shelter  from  man,  that  is  but 
a  passing  phase  of  feeling,  and  results  from  our 
having  experienced  in  man  something  very  different 
from  what  man  ought  to  render  to  us. 

A  large  part  of  our  delight  in  art  seems  to  be 
the  result  of  the  same  longing  after  personal 
communion.  It  is  strange  that  we  derive  from 
the  picture  of  a  beautiful  thing,  imperfect  though 
the  reproduction  must  be,  a  kind  of  pleasure  which 
we  do  not  feel  from  gazing  upon  the  thing  itself: 
and  that  even  things  which  are  not  beautiful  in 
themselves  are  capable  of  conferring  keen  pleasure 
when  they  appear  in  some  skilful  picture.  This 
shows  that  we  are  framed  to  regard  everything 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  209 

which  bears  signs  of  having  been  passed  through 
a  personal  mind,  with  intensified  delight ;  as  if 
nothing,  however  fair,  was  the  same  to  us  without 
the  mark  of  personality  upon  it  as  when  it  bears 
that  stamp.  And  art  must  recognise  this  principle. 
If  it  strives  for  mere  imitative  reproduction  it  is 
but  a  poor  thing.  It  must  select  and  interpret 
and  explain  nature,  and  give  us  its  productions 
with  the  marks  of  creative  intention  and  will. 

74.  This  irresistible  longing  after  personal  com- 
munion bears  every  mark  of  having  been  impressed 
upon  the  mind  of  man  by  its  Author.  The  desire  has 

the  stamp  of 

This  we  may  say  without  the  most  dis-  evolution. 
tant  intention  to  deny  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  If 
the  chief  apostle  of  evolution  himself  is,  as  we  have 
seen,  permitted  to  speak  of  the  "naturally  revealed 
end  towards  which  the  power  manifested  in 
creation  works,"  why  should  we  be  denied  the 
liberty  of  recognising  in  the  ends  of  evolution  the 
purpose  of  God  ?  The  mind  of  man  is,  so  far  as 
we  can  see,  the  crown  and  summit  of  evolution 
and  that  which  lies  deepest  and  works  most 
strongly  in  the  mind  of  man  must  be  regarded  as 
the  issue  towards  which  evolution  tends.  Where 
shall  we  find  any  tendency  that  is  more  deeply 

r 


210  MAN'S  KNO  W LEDGE 

impressed  upon  man  than  the  longing  for  personal 
communion,  or  any  object  for  which  man  can 
better  be  said  to  exist  than  that  of  the  recognition 
of  personality  in  the  outer  world  ?  And  even  if, 
as  extreme  evolutionists  are  ready  to  maintain, 
we  must  put  aside  entirely  all  recognition  of  final 
causes  and  of  a  purpose  discernible  in  the  progress 
of  things,  we  are  not  therefore  obliged  to  set 
aside  the  great  fact  in  human  nature  on  which 
we  have  been  dwelling.  It  remains  a  fact,  how- 
soever the  fact  arises,  that  man  can  nowhere  be 
content  without  personal  communion  with  others. 
So  he  is  framed  and  fashioned.  And  he  cannot 
make  himself  another  being  than  this.  He  can 
contradict  or  ignore  this  characteristic  of  his 
nature  only  at  the  same  cost  at  which  any 
essential  want  may  be  denied,  namely,  misery. 

75.  Now,  if  the  desire  for  personal  intercourse 

drives  us  all  our  life  long  to  the  company  of  our 

And  demands     fellow-men,  to  delight    in  recognising 

facJbTthlntt'       ^T     PreSenCG      and      tneir     WOI"k>     a"d 

receives  here.  a  iongjng  to  fin(j  personality  even 
where  it  does  not  really  exist,  it  is  impossible 
that  the  desire  should  be  fully  satisfied  by  any 
communion  that  we  can  find  in  the  natural  world. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  .    211 

Though  the  satisfaction  which  the  craving  meets 
in  our  intercourse  with  men  be  very  great,  yet  it 
is  never  absolutely  complete :  it  always  manifests 
itself  as  a  desire  partly  unsatisfied  even  in  presence 
of  the  best  supply  that  the  world  can  afford  to 
it.  We  never  can  have  such  satisfaction  in  personal 
communion  as  does  not  make  us  long  after  more 
of  it  and  deeper.  Nay,  the  awakening  of  spiritual 
longings  which  cannot  be  satisfied  is  often  the 
characteristic  effect  upon  us  of  the  best  earthly 
communion,  and  the  point  in  which  it  excels 
that  intercourse  with  men  which  is  ordinary  and 
superficial. 

How  imperfect  is  the  best  communion  of  man 
with  man  !  For  how  short  a  time  it  lasts  and  how 
small  a  part  of  life  it  covers  !  Although  sympathy 
with  other  spirits  is  so  fitted  to  add  delight  to 
every  experience  of  nature  and  art  that  the  best 
we  can  enjoy  in  this  sort  is  all  imperfect  without 
it,  yet  few  of  us  command  the  truest  sympathy 
on  the  part  of  other  human  minds  :  and  if  we  have 
it  we  are  hardly  able  to  enjoy  the  treasure,  and 
very  soon  we  lose  it.  Such  are  the  conditions 
of  our  existence  that  we  are  obliged  to  live  most 
of  our  lives  and  to  gain  most  of  our  experience 

P   2 


2 1 2  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

alone,  to  the  maiming  of  life  and  the  loss  of  the 
best  uses  of  experience.  Life  as  a  whole  is  but 
imperfect  and  consists  of  commencements  rather 
than  accomplished  ends  ;  the  best  things  it  gives 
are  only  fitted  to  be  foretastes  of  something  better, 
to  keep  alive  our  longing  for  a  life  that  shall  be 
fuller  of  satisfaction  and  of  usefulness,  and  that 
shall  not  be  cut  short  by  death.  If  this  be  the 
general  condition  of  life,  we  cannot  wonder  that 
it  should  be  specially  observable  in  that  personal 
intercourse  which  is  the  very  essence  of  life  :  and 
that  here  especially  we  should  find  great  happiness 
indeed,  and  great  power  of  usefulness  and  profit, 
but  all  marked  with  imperfection,  a  promise  rather 
than  a  fulfilment. 

This  longing  after  better  and  higher  personal 
communion  than  this  world  can  give  is  not  the 
unhealthy  discontent  of  minds  that  will  not  make 
the  best  use  of  what  they  have.  No  one  who 
considers  the  spiritual  history  of  mankind  with 
attention  can  fail  to  see  that  it  is  those  who  have 
best  used,  both  for  their  own  happiness  and  for  the 
benefit  of  others,  the  gifts  of  personal  intercourse 
on  earth,  who  have  also  longed  most  for  intercourse 
with  divine  persons,  more  intimately  enjoyed  than 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  213 

the  earthly,  and  extended  beyond  this  life.  They 
have  not  complained  of  any  poverty  in  the  blessings 
of  companionship  with  their  fellows  here.  It  is 
the  very  blessedness  of  the  earthly  communion 
that  has  both  made  them  long  for  the  higher 
and  believe  that  the  Powers  who  conferred  the 
one  must  have  the  other  in  store.  The  desire 
to  see  personal  communion  extended  everywhere, 
so  that  there  shall  not  be  a  single  pleasure  enjoyed 
by  man  with  which  the  sense  of  one  who  sym- 
pathises with  it  shall  not  mingle,  stands  in  close 
connection  with  the  mental  conviction  that  the 
fellowship  of  human  beings  is  a  real  gift,  the 
existence  of  which  requires  to  be  accounted  for; 
and  is  best  accounted  for  by  the  belief  that  it 
flows  from  the  divine  cause  who  Himself  gives  us 
in  communion  with  Himself  that  of  which  human 
intercourse  is  the  image. 

76    If  the  faith  in  our  own  person-    The  owerof 
ality,  in    the   power   of    our  will,  the 
command   of  our  conscience,   and  the 
struggle   with    the    world   which    per- 
sonality   imposes,   find  their  explana-    *£*££. 
tion    in   God,   the    power   of   man    to 
commune     with     man,    the    personality    of    men 


214  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


considered  not  individually  but  in  its  mys- 
terious commerce  with  other  men,  must  have  an 
explanation  too.  There  must  be  some  higher 
power  which  confers  the  wonderful  gift  of  com- 
munion upon  men  and  forms  the  medium  in 
which  it  is  carried  on.  That  we  are  one  in  Him  is 
a  truth  which  is  capable  both  of  a  natural  and  a 
supernatural  application.  And  the  whole  character 
of  human  fellowship  is  explained  by  the  character 
of  God,  who  enables  His  children  to  understand 
and  feel  for  each  other  in  a  fashion  too  mysterious 
for  unconscious  nature  wholly  to  explain. 

And  so  it  comes  that  the  same  want  of  the 
human  soul  which  leads  it  through  nature  to  man, 
leads  it  through  man  to  God.  Of  earthly  powers 
that  which  is  highest  in  man  is  his  brotherhood 
with  men.  And  this  is  the  part  of  human  life  which 
best  reflects  God  and  most  clearly  points  to  Him. 
For  the  best  human  personality  is  on  a  level  with 
ourselves,  and  with  all  its  helpfulness  and  happiness 
it  only  meets  us  in  the  same  fashion  in  which  we 
meet  it  ;  and  how  poor  we  feel  that  to  be.  We  are 
left  longing  for  a  personality  which  bears  to  our 
own  the  relation  not  merely  of  a  helper  but  of  a 
source  and^  origin,  and  which  has  known  and  loved 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  215 

us  before  ever  we  knew  or  loved  it.  And  though 
many  signs  of  God  are  found  in  the  individual  life 
it  is  the  life  of  man  with  man  which  has  been  most 
powerful  to  lead  him  to  the  divine  source  of 
love. 


VI. 

GOD  REVEALED. 

"  Call  no  man  your  father  upon  the  earth,  for  one  is  your  Father, 
which  is  in  heaven." — S.  MATT,  xxiii.  9. 

"  We,  being  many,  are  one  body  in  Christ." — ROM.  xii.  5. 

' '  Because  ye  are  sons,  God  hath  sent  forth  the  Spirit  of  His  Son 
into  your  hearts,  crying,  Abba,  Father." — GAL.  iv.  6. 

77.  At  the  first  glance  it  seems  strange  that  while 

man  can  understand  so  many  things  he  should  not 

be  able  to   understand  himself.     And 

Knowledge  of  .      . 

man  is  not      yet  upon  reflection  it  is  not  so  strange. 

merely  know- 
ledge of  the      For  the  knowledge  how  to  work  with 

instruments  he 

works  with  but    an  instrument  is  a  different  thing  from 

of  himself. 

the  knowledge  of  its  construction  :  and 
the  man  who  is  engaged  in  working  the  instru- 
ment is  not  of  necessity  the  most  likely  person 
to  explain  its  mechanism.  We  are  instruments 


MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE,  ETC.  217 

constructed  for  a  practical  purpose,  namely  life  in 
the  world.  And  our  mechanism  has  been  adapted 
to  that  end,  adjusted  and  enlarged,  as  the  evolution- 
ists tell  us,  according  to  the  practical  needs  and 
occasions  of  an  immense  lapse  of  time.  There  has 
been  nothing  in  this  history  calculated  to  train 
man  in  reflection  upon  his  own  origin,  or  upon  his 
own  nature  and  powers,  except  so  far  as  they  are 
the  instruments  with  which  he  has  to  work.  And 
in  this  point  of  view  they  hold  the  same  external 
position  to  him  which  the  rest  of  nature  does. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  many  men  should  spend 
their  whole  mental  lives  among  externals,  and 
that  some  should  turn  this  habit  into  a  philo- 
sophy and  assert  that  the  knowledge  of  the 
positive  history  of  his  own  states  of  mind  is 
the  only  knowledge  of  himself  that  is  possible 
for  man. 

And  yet  there  must  be  another  knowledge. 
Besides  his  knowledge  of  his  instrument  the 
workman  must  have  a  knowledge  of  his  own 
power  to  work  it,  and,  therefore,  of  his  own 
existence  as  separate  from  it.  The  knowledge 
can  not  be  formally  stated;  it  can  be  used  only 
for  practical  purposes  and  in  connection  with 


2 1 8  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

work.  Yet  it  is  plain  that  this  knowledge  must 
be  implied  in  every  moment  of  work,  and  that  if 
the  artisan  were  to  lose  it  his  work  would  stop. 
Moreover,  it  is  a  knowledge  which  is  capable  of 
varieties  in  intensity,  and  according  as  it  is  stronger 
or  weaker  the  efficiency  of  the  worker  will  grow  or 
relax.  The  belief  that  we  ourselves  are  something 
different  from  our  bodies  and  from  our  minds  is 
in  its  very  nature  mysterious,  and  may  even  be 
called  an  absurdity  by  persons  unwilling  to  accept 
mysteries.  But  if  we  accept  as  a  working  hypo- 
thesis the  belief  that  we  have  the  command  over 
both  body  and  mind,  and  therefore  must  not  identify 
ourselves  with  them,  it  is  confirmed  by  every  prac- 
tical test.  Our  powers,  both  material  and  mental, 
array  themselves  obediently  under  the  command 
of  the  self  when  it  asserts  its  command.  Whereas 
if  we  determine  to  believe  that  we  are  nothing 
except  a  bundle  of  faculties  the  theory  cannot  ,be 
put  into  practice.  An  army  without  a  general, 
or  an  engine  without  a  driver,  are  faint  images  to 
express  what  a  bundle  of  faculties  would  be 
without  any  I  myself  to  command  them.  There 
must,  therefore,  be  a  self:  and  the  confidence  with 
which  we  make  this  assertion  shows  that  we  are 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  219 

conscious  of  a  knowledge  of  the  self.  We  know  it 
as  a  mystery,  but  we  know  it.  We  cannot  prove 
it,  or  even  put  it  into  a  form  of  definition  which 
is  capable  of  being  submitted  to  the  process  of 
proof.  It  belongs  to  those  original  principles 
which  must  be  accepted  as  the  bases  of  all  reason- 
ing, and  for  that  very  cause  must  themselves  be 
accepted  without  being  proved. 

The  knowledge  which  we  have  of  the  personality 
of  other  men  partakes  of  the  same  character  as 
that  which  we  have  of  our  own.  When  we  ascribe 
to  them  the  property  of  personality  we  must  take 
the  very  meaning  which  we  attribute  to  the  word 
from  our  own  consciousness.  We  are  conscious 
that  our  powers  and  attributes  of  mind  and  body, 
whether  original  or  acquired,  would  not  if  added 
together  constitute  our  whole  self;  but  that  we 
must  also,  and  chiefly,  take  account  of  an 
indescribable  some  one  who  is  possessor  of  all 
these  faculties,  or,  if  you  will,  is  possessed  by 
them,  but  at  all  events  is  not  they.  And  if  we 
believe  that  other  men  are  like  ourselves  we 
must  hold  the  same  opinion  concerning  them  : 
that  the  process  of  adding  together  all  their 
faculties  and  attributes,  and  what  we  know,  of 


220  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

them  externally  and  historically,  would  not  make 
the  whole  of  what  we  know  them  to  be.  We 
must  also  hold  them  to  be  constituted  not  only  of 
faculties  but  of  the  same  mysterious  and  unknow- 
able self  behind  the  faculties  which  we  find  in 
ourselves.  This  cannot  be  proved  concerning  them. 
For  the  very  nature  of  this  inward  part  shuts  it 
up  from  proof.  It  cannot  be  placed  upon  the 
table  to  demonstrate  that  it  exists,  nor  dissected 
to  show  what  it  is  made  of.  But  if  we  have 
faith  to  believe  that  our  fellow-men  are  not 
machines  but  selves  and  persons,  and  to  act 
upon  the  belief,  it  is  found  to  answer.  Men 
respond  to  personal  treatment  as  they  never 
respond  to  any  dead  force. 

Therefore,  in  spite  of  all  difficulties,  we  claim 
that  we  know  our  fellow-men  to  possess  person- 
ality. And  we  know  them  not  merely  in  theory 
but  practically.  There  is  a  kind  and  degree  of 
sympathy  or  fellow  feeling  which  is  peculiar  to 
personal  beings  in  their  intercourse  with  each 
other,  and  partakes  of  the  same  mysterious  and 
indescribable  character  that  belongs  to  the  nature 
of  such  beings.  So  that  although  we  can  never 
know  other  people  explicitly  as  subjects,  or  in 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  221 

their  own  intimate  self-consciousness,  yet  some- 
thing of  a  subjective  nature  enters  our  knowledge 
of  them  in  the  way  of  feeling  if  not  of  intellectual 
perception.  In  one  sense  we  cannot  know  even 
ourselves  as  subjects  ;  for  as  soon  as  we  contem- 
plate ourselves  we  become  objects  to  our  minds; 
and  yet  we  know  ourselves  subjectively  so  far  as 
this,  that  we  know  that  the  feelings  we  experience 
must  have  a  subject,  and  from  experiencing  the 
feeling  we  know  something  of  the  self  which  it 
affects.  And  the  same  way  of  knowledge  extends 
to  other  people  also,  and  we  know  not  merely 
their  feelings,  but  know  them  as  they  feel.  And 
although  this  language  may  seem  to  some  people 
forced,  and  even,  perhaps,  meaningless,  yet  if  they 
were  asked  whether  other  people  may  not  make 
us  one  with  themselves,  and  whether  we  cannot 
make  them  one  with  ourselves  in  a  way  in  which 
no  impersonal  thing  can  ever  be,  they  would 
probably  assent. 

78.  We  have  been   led  through  the    Andourknow. 


knowledge  of  ourselves  and  of  other        f 


men    up   to    the   knowledge   of  God. 

Like  the  others,  the  knowledge  of  God       objective' 

is    one  which    depends    on    faith.      The    idea    of 


222  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


God  cannot  be  defined.  It  cannot  be  proved.1  The 
utmost  the  understanding  can  do  is  to  prove  the 
want  of  Him  :  to  show  the  blank  place  which  re- 
mains in  nature  if  we  do  not  suppose  Him,  and  the 
futile  and  unaccountable  character  which  belongs  to 
the  spiritual  conditions  and  history  of  mankind 
unless  He  be  a  reality.  But  it  is  the  power  of  com- 
munion with  persons  involved  in  the  possession  of 
personality  which  accepts  the  faith  in  Him  as  a 
supreme  practical  necessity  :  as  a  fact  without  which 
we  not  merely  cannot  explain  our  own  existence 
but  cannot  exist. 

We  know  God  not  merely  objectively  as  the 
maker  of  the  universe,  but  subjectively,  as  united 
with  the  self  in  which  all  our  faculties  inhere,  and 
to  which  all  our  experiences  belong.  God  has 

1  "  Thou  canst  not  prove  the  nameless,  O  my  son, 
Nor  canst  thou  prove  the  world  thou  movest  in  ; 
Thou  canst  not  prove  that  thou  art  body  alone, 
Nor  canst  thou  prove  that  thou  art  spirit  alone, 
Nor  canst  thou  prove  that  thou  art  both  in  one. 
Thou  canst  not  prove  thou  art  immortal,  no, 
Nor  yet  that  thou  art  mortal — nay,  my  son, 
Thou  canst  not  prove  that  I  who  speak  with  thee 
Am  not  thyself  in  converse  with  thyself— 
For  nothing  worthy  proving  can  be  proven 
Nor  yet  disproven.     Wherefore  if  thou  be  wise, 
Cleave  ever  to  the  sunnier  side  of  doubt, 
And  cling  to  faith  beyond  the  forms  of  faith." 

TENNYSON,  The  Ancient  Sage. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  223 

never  been  set  forth  among  mankind,  at  least  by 
any  of  His  true  prophets,  in  the  Church  or  out 
of  it,  as  being  external  to  man  in  the  same  sense 
in  which  nature  is.  "  In  Him  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being,"  could  not  be  said  of  anything 
wholly  external.  He  is  both  within  us  and 
without :  He  is  both  one  with  us  and  different 
from  us.  And  the  inward  knowledge  of  Him  comes 
to  us  through  the  outward  and  along  with  it.1 

79.  An  outward  origin  of  inward  faith  charac- 
terises our  self-knowledge  and  our  knowledge  of 
mankind.  We  can  know  nothing  in-  v  .  . 

Revelation  the 

tellectually  except  through  the  forms    %%££& 
which  our  minds  can  grasp.     But  there     man  orGod> 
comes  to  us  through  these  forms  a  knowledge  of 
something  which  the  mind  cannot  grasp.     It  may 
be  truly  said  that  all  acts  and  words  of  ourselves 
and  of  other  men  are  revelations,  as  bringing  us  in 
contact  with  the  personal  agent  behind  them,  whom 
without  them  we  could  not  know  and  whom   we 
never  can  fully  comprehend  even  with  their  help. 

1  "Wir  mussten  den  '  Weltwillen '  seinem  Wesen  nach  von 
vornherein  in  einer  Doppeltheit  erfassen,  namlich  als  transcendent 
und  immanent  zu  gleicher  zeit.  .  .  .  Somit  iallt  denn  hier  unser 
Weltwille  mit  der  ewigen  Gottheit  selbst  zusammen."— PETERS, 
PP-  SS2,  353- 


224  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

In  like  manner  God  can  never  be  known  except 
by  revelation :  and  every  fact  in  nature  or  in 
history  by  which  we  know  God  partakes  of  the 
character  of  revelation.  It  is  a  misleading  use 
of  the  term  revelation  which  confines  it  to  his- 
torical incidents  alone ;  as  if  nature  also  did  not 
both  reveal  God  and  also  fail  to  reveal  Him  just 
as  the  events  in  history  do.  Both  in  nature  and 
in  history  we  learn  to  know  Him,  but  in  both 
He  is  declared  as  one  whom  '  no  man  hath  seen  at 
any  time,'  as  one  whom  '  no  man  hath  seen  or  can 
see/  For  there  is  in  both  the  external  world  and 
in  history  an  element  of  contingency  and  limita- 
tion essential  to  their  very  nature,  even  apart 
from  the  discovery  of  imperfection  according  to 
earthly  standards.  The  infinite  God  cannot  be 
manifested  by  them.  The  contrast,  the  oppo- 
sition which  exists  between  facts  existing  in  time 
and  space  and  the  eternal  personality  of  God 
is  essential  and  would  exist  even  if  they  were  the 
most  perfect  revelations  which  facts  are  capable  of 
being.  No  essential  difference  in  the  terms  of  the 
problem  is  made  by  the  assertion  or  denial  of  the 
perfection  of  nature  or  of  the  plenary  inspiration 
of  the  Bible  or  the  infallibility  of  the  Church. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  225 

Yet  without  revelation  made  through  facts  God 
cannot  be  known  any  more  than  man.  The  under- 
standing must  open  the  way  before  that  mys- 
terious faculty  within  us  can  come  into  exercise 
and  tell  of  the  presence  of  personality.  And  all 
attempts  to  realise  personality  except  in  connec- 
tion with  the  living  history  in  which  it  is  displayed 
at  work  must  be  abstract  and  lifeless.  It  is  in  the 
play  of  feeling  and  life  that  personality  comes  to 
view.  In  the  struggles  and  affections  of  life  our 
own  inner  nature  shows  itself.  Through  the  infinite 
variety  of  circumstances  and  the  action  and  re- 
action of  our  organism  and  environment  we  learn 
that  there  is  something  in  ourselves  beyond  our 
organism.  The  freedom  and  the  power  of  our 
real  self  is  known  to  be  present.  And  the  like 
is  true  of  the  human  personalities  around  us.  We 
know  them  in  action  and  in  life,  and  thus  only.  It 
follows  that  neither  our  own  personality  nor  that 
of  our  neighbours  can  ever  be  known  except 
under  some  form.  The  form  is  that  idea  level 
and  comprehensible  to  our  mental  faculties  which 
embodies  in  itself  the  series  of  facts  through 
which  we  know  ourselves  or  our  friends.  And 
underneath  the  form  lies,  as  we  always  feel,  an 

Q 


226  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

incomprehensible  subject  the  same  through  all 
changes.  Thus  the  form  of  each  man's  existence 
is  found  in  the  characteristics  and  peculiarities  of 
his  body  and  mind  and  circumstances.  These 
things  constitute  his  individuality,  and  they  may 
vary  and  change  in  infinite  ways.  But  his  person- 
ality is  that  abiding  subject  which  retains  its 
identity  through  all  changes  and  which  he  denotes 
by  the  word  I. 

80.  If  discussion  about  human  nature  becomes 
empty  and  uninteresting  unless  it  concerns  itself 


Emptiness  of  Various    forms    of    life,    which 


into  a  livinS'  the  same  must 

revelation. 


fro 


a  disadvantage  under  which  religion  is  constantly 
placed  when  the  question  of  its  evidence  is  dis- 
cussed. The  question  is  often  argued  in  the 
abstract  without  any  reference  to  the  contents  of 
religion,  in  which  alone  its  living  interest  for 
man  is  found  ;  while  at  the  same  time  human 
nature  is  displayed  in  the  condition  of  wanting 
religion,  but  not  in  the  better  and  more  attractive 
condition  in  which  the  want  is  filled  with  the 
fulness  of  God. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  227 

The  want  of  religion  which  human  nature  displays, 
were  it  ever  so  fully  proved,  can  never  in  its  nega- 
tive character  as  a  want,  prove  religion  true.  It  may 
prove  that  man  can  never  be  happy  without  a  re- 
ligion ;  it  may  prove  religion  so  necessary  to  the 
highest  sentiments  and  the  best  morality  that  the 
beneficial  nature  of  truth  to  man  shall  seem  very 
doubtful,  if  it  be  truth  to  teach  that  there  is 
no  foundation  for  religion.  It  may  reduce  human 
life,  in  the  absence  of  religion,  to  something  so 
poor  and  disappointing,  whether  to  the  individual 
or  the  race,  that  it  is  not  worth  living  and  had 
better  never  have  been  given.  Yet  all  these 
miseries  might  be  our  destiny  :  a  want  does  not 
prove  the  existence  of  its  own  supply.  But  the 
want  of  religion  considered  as  a  fact  in  human 
history  continued  through  a  vast  number  of  ages 
with  the  utmost  persistence  and  in  spite  of  vast 
discouragements,  assumes  more  than  a  negative 
character.  A  want  is  in  one  point  of  view 
a  positive  phenomenon,  an  active  exertion  of 
human  faculties  in  wishing  and  striving.  And 
the  obstinately  maintained  action  of  human  nature 
in  keeping  alive  the  want  of  religion  is  no  mean 
proof  that  there  is  positive  truth  in  religion.  For 

Q  2 


228  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

the  most  obvious  account  of  the  persistence  of  the 
want  is  that  enough  of  supply  has  been  received 
to  keep  the  want  living.  Mendicants  do  not  ply 
their  calling  for  years  in  a  desert  where  there  are 
no  givers.  And  we  may  be  sure  that  if  the 
prayers  and  cravings  of  religion  bad  for  so  many 
thousand  ages  been  uttered  to  mere  emptiness, 
and  had  received  no  answer  addressed  to  either 
the  inward  or  the  outward  faculties  of  man,  they 
would  long  since  have  ceased  to  be  felt  and  have 
vanished  as  functions  having  no  use. 

But  although  the  religious  wants  and  cravings 
of  humanity  have  their  positive  side  and  form 
no  uninteresting  subject  of  treatment  both  in 
history  and  in  fiction  to  this  very  day,  yet  a 
more  fruitful  subject  and  better  fitted  to  make 
religion  acceptable,  is  its  fitness  to  supply  these 
wants  and  cravings,  and  to  satisfy  man's  mind 
and  heart.  Now  the  wants  which  above  all  urge 
men  to  religion  are  those  which  are  fostered  by 
their  experience  of  their  nature,  and  by  their 
intercourse  with  one  another.  Men  cannot  satisfy 
themselves  that  they  are  filling  their  due  place 
in  nature  or  exerting  their  due  influence,  unless 
they  ascribe  to  themselves  personality :  a  free 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  229 

and  ruling  power  over  nature,  and  especially 
over  their  own  natural  faculties  and  powers.  And 
they  cannot  satisfy  themselves  that  they  know 
their  fellow  men  in  their  true  character  so  long  as 
they  consider  them  as  mere  parts  of  nature  like 
the  inanimate  world :  they  must  find  persons  among 
the  things  of  the  world  and  personal  action  exerted 
through  the  things  of  the  world,  or  life  will  seem 
to  them  empty.  Their  want  in  religion  is  the 
same  carried  higher. 

8 1.  What  form  of  religion  shall  we  select  in 
order  to  try  whether  the  habits  of  mind  which  are 
fostered  amidst  human  personalities 

The  Catholic 

can  find  in  a  divine  faith  that  larger  faith  is  the  form 

of  religion  in 

exercise  which  they  crave  ?     Whether      which  the 

question  whether 

we    believe    or    not,    we    can     have   religion  satisfies 

the  wants  of  our 

little   doubt    in    naming    the    religion   personality  may 

best  be  tested. 

which  we  may  most  fitly  choose 
for  an  example.  The  Catholic  faith  must  be 
fairly  owned  to  have  best  shown  what  religion 
can  be  and  do  for  men.  It  has  prevailed  among 
the  highest  races  and  marked  its  power  by 
the  most  beneficent  results.  Those  that  take 
refuge  in  religion  from  doubt  almost  always 
select  this  form  of  it.  And  there  are  comparatively 


230  MAWS  KNO  WLEDGE 

very  few  who  change  the  Catholic  for  any  other 
form  of  faith,  however  many  there  may  be  who 
forsake  it  and  others  for  unbelief.  But  we 
must  remember  that  the  Catholic  religion  contem- 
plates other  forms  with  no  contempt.  It  regards 
them  as  yielding  imperfectly  that  which  it  gives 
in  purity  and  completeness. 

The  Catholic  faith  is  this,  that  we  worship  one 
God  in  Trinity  and  Trinity  in  Unity,  neither  con- 
founding the  Persons  nor  dividing  the  substance. 
The  essence  of  Catholic  doctrine  was  held  in  the 
most  important  ages  of  the  Church's  life  to  consist 
in  the  maintenance  of  the  creed  of  the  divine  per- 
sonality ;   and  all  other  questions  were   regarded 
as  subsidiary  to  this.     For  personality  fills  as  im- 
portant a  part  in  theology  as  it  does  in  human 
life.     Communion   with  God  as   a   Person    is  the 
essence  of  religion,  and  the  divine  personality  must 
needs    be    the    most    important    subject    of    the 
Church's  thought.     Her  decisions  on  the   subject 
rest    confessedly    upon    an    inscrutable    mystery. 
She    cannot    understand    the   Godhead,  and    she 
does  not  encourage  her  children  to   believe   that 
they  can   do   so.     She  can   but   record  the  facts 
which   are  revealed   in  Scripture  and  in  her  own 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  231 

traditions  and  in  the  experiences  of  that  divine 
life  of  the  soul  which  her  members  live,  and  which 
she  sums  up  and  represents.  Every  sentiment  in 
the  mind  of  any  man  must  rest  upon  a  truth,  or  a 
belief  supposed  true,  which  the  mind  explicitly 
or  implicitly  holds ;  much  more  must  a  religious 
life  of  peculiar  stamp  and  character,  bringing  with 
it  the  renunciation  of  many  apparent  advantages 
and  spreading  through  a  vast  mass  of  human  minds 
of  all  classes  and  degrees,  rest  upon  adequate 
truths.  It  is  impossible  that  a  spiritual  life 
so  entirely  different  from  that  which  the  visible 
world  and  the  powers  of  nature  have  ever  produced 
could  be  fostered  in  man  without  a  conviction  of 
the  firmest  character  that  relations  exist  for  him 
beyond  nature.  Nothing  dreamy,  or  indefinite,  or 
merely  sentimental,  or  manufactured  by  the 
imagination  without  reality  behind  it,  is  adequate 
to  be  the  foundation  of  such  a  superstructure. 
And  in  the  Catholic  creed  we  find  the  Church's 
expression  of  what  she  found  revealed  and 
accepted  with  the  assent  of  her  whole  spiritual 
consciousness  as  the  truth  on  which  the  new  life 
of  Christianity  must  be  built.  It  is  a  praise  which 
would  perhaps  have  been  rejected  by  the  objects 


232  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

of  it,  yet  is  probably  well  founded,  that  the 
authorities  of  the  Church  in  their  doctrinal  decrees 
were  not  so  exclusively  moved  by  the  weight  of 
authority  as  they  believed  themselves  to  be.  The 
aptness  of  the  faith  to  be  the  support  of  Christian 
life  and  its  fitness  to  supply  the  wants  of  humanity 
co-operated  with  deference  to  authority,  and  im- 
parted the  warmth  and  earnestness  to  its  advocates 
which  mere  conservatism  and  the  attachment  to 
old  forms  never  could  have  given. 

82.  Now  there  must  be  some  great  reason    in 

the  nature  of  things  which  procured  for  this  creed 

the   acceptance   and    power   which    it 

Why  has  this 

creed  met  with    possesses.   And  it  seems  no  improbable 

such  acceptance 

and  exercised     account  of  the  matter  to  believe  that 

such  power  ? 

it  has  carried  out  and  satisfied  in  the 
spiritual  sphere  those  habits  and  tendencies- which 
are  fostered  in  man  by  his  experience  of  life  and 
his  intercourse  with  other  men.  Personality  in  the 
divine  nature  is  accepted  as  a  general  truth, 
because  it  explains  to  man  how  personality  exists 
at  all  in  the  world,  and  because  it  satisfies  the 
desire  after  personal  communion  which  is  the  most 
powerful  affection  of  man's  mind  and  heart.  And 
it  would  be  a  probable  and  sufficient  explanation 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  233 

of  the  welcome  which  the  Catholic  creed  has  met 
if  we  were  to  find  that  it  explains  the  existence 
of  the  most  essential  forms  under  which  personal 
communion  exists  between  man  and  man,  and 
satisfies  in  a  higher  and  eternal  sphere  the  habits 
which  those  forms  of  human  communion  impress 
upon  the  heart  of  man  so  deeply  and  so  strongly 
as  to  become  a  part  of  its  very  frame. 

We  know  that  a  human  personality  existing 
alone  is  inconceivable,  and  would  form  no 
specimen  of  humanity,  any  more  than  a  brick 
would  form  a  specimen  of  a  house.  While  we 
know  the  personality  of  other  men  only  as  the 
reflection  of  our  own,  we  are  made  aware  of  our 
own  and  educated  in  the  practical  use  of  it,  only 
by  contact  with  them.  Although  in  the  logical 
order  our  knowledge  of  our  own  personality  pre- 
cedes our  knowledge  of  that  of  other  men,  yet  it  is 
not  so  in  the  order  of  time.  Our  consciousness 
of  ourselves  and  of  other  persons  come  together 
into  being  under  the  pressure  of  the  experience 
of  life,  and  in  the  forms  which  life  prescribes  and 
imposes.  Life  in  its  experiences  teaches  us  im- 
perceptibly but  irresistibly  through  every  moment 
from  birth  to  death,  and  fills  us  with  the  pre- 


234  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

possessions,  the  anticipations,  the  bent  and  habit 
which  we  must  perforce  carry  into  every  state  into 
which  we  can  come.     Opinions   adopted  in  later 
days  are  but  weak  and  ineffectual  agents  in  eradi- 
cating the  mental  tendencies  which  all  life  from 
the  first  has  impressed  on  us  ;  and  in  life  the  chief 
element  by  far  is  personal  intercourse.     This  is  the 
true  educator  of  man.     Philosophers  and  preachers 
are  alike  powerless    in    comparison  to  the    daily 
teaching  of  personal  communion  between  man  and 
man,  and  still  more  between  child  and  man ;  and 
their  comparative  impotence  is  not  less  conspicu- 
ous when  they  meet  with  assent  than  when  they 
are  rejected.     Habits  of  thought  and  tendencies  of 
affection  which  have  grown  through   our   earliest 
experience,  and  been  inherited  from  countless  ages 
before,  assert  themselves  in  spite  of  all  adopted 
opinions.     The  latter   are   only  heresies — theories 
taken  up  by  the  mind  ;  the  former  are  of  the  very 
make  of   the  soul,  which   it    did  not  voluntarily 
assume,  and  which   it  cannot   cast  away.     When 
we  think  over  this    truth  which  the  doctrines  of 
development  have  brought  into  great  prominence, 
it  seems  that  no  more  impossible  supposition  can 
be  conceived  than  this ;  that  a  being  framed  and 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  235 

educated  to  find  in  personal  communion  the  crown 
and  completion  of  all  the  experiences  of  his  life, 
his  guidance  and  his  happiness  alike,  should  be 
able  to  look  beyond  the  world  into  that  invisible 
sphere  which  presses  so  closely  upon  him,  and  be 
satisfied  to  find  there,  not  the  personal  presence 
which  is  the  highest  thing  in  human  life,  but  the 
dead  unconsciousness  which  he  here  knows  as  the 
mark  not  of  persons  but  of  things.  And  if  man 
seeks  personality  and  will  have  it  in  the  spiritual 
world,  he  must  seek  it  in  the  forms  which  are 
the  inseparable  clothing  of  it  here. 

83.  How  then  shall  we  discern  the  essential 
forms  under  which  personality  meets  us  in  life, 
so  as  to  be  able  to  pronounce  what 

It  corresponds  to 

that  religion  is  which  reflects  this  ex--     the  essential 

forms  under 

perience  in  the  completest  way  ?     We  which  personality 

meets  us  in  life. 

know  that  in  various  descriptions  of 
polytheism  there  has  been  a  transfer  on  the  most 
lavish  scale  of  the  forms  of  human  personality  into 
religion.  Every  trade  and  profession,  every  city 
and  community,  every  virtue,  and  sometimes  every 
vice,  which  existed  among  men,  had  among  the 
gods  its  representative,  which  embodied  its  idea  in 
a  more  intense  and  permanent  form  than  was  to 


236  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

be  found  in  humanity.  These  were  corrupt 
religions :  but  they  were  the  corruptions  of  the 
great  truth  that  as  man  and  man's  life  is  the  chief 
work  of  God,  so  man  and  his  life  must  be  the 
chief  revelation  of  God.  The  principle  as  used  in 
polytheism  assumed  excessively  capricious  forms 
without  any  warrant  in  revealed  facts.  God  had 
declared  Himself  to  men,  St.  Paul  believed,  but 
they  changed  the  glory  of  the  incorruptible  God 
into  an  image  made  like  to  corruptible  man. 
Man  must  be  more  humble  and  self-restrained  in 
his  observations  of  God's  teaching  impressed  on 
human  life,  if  he  is  really  to  find  there  any 
anticipation  of  what  God  is. 

But  it  is  not  difficult  for  us  to  find  the  true 
method.  In  order  to  discover  the  genuine  impress 
and  reflection  of  God  in  human  life,  we  must  leave 
out  all  the  corruptions  and  unessential  develop- 
ments of  humanity,  and  go  back  to  the  purest  and 
simplest  elements  of  existence  common  to  all  men 
at  all  stages  of  progress,  and  in  which  all  minds 
are  moulded  by  the  universal  necessities  of  the 
case.  And  these  we  find  in  the  primary  relations 
of  the  family. 

Man  wakens  to  a  sense  of  his  own  personality  to 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  237 

find  a  father  above  him  and  brothers  beside  him  ; 
the  mother  and  the  sisters  repeating  the  same 
relations  in  a  subordinate  form.  The  father  above, 
the  brother  beside,  and  the  self  within  :  human 
nature  cannot  exist  in  more  elementary  forms 
than  these.  Man  would  not  be  what  he  is  if  person- 
ality were  not  found  in  these  forms.  They  are 
the  spiritual  mould  into  which  the  soul  of  every 
man  is  run,  and  they  give  it  a  shape  which  can 
never  be  changed.  It  is  impossible  that  the  soul 
should  not  retain  through  all  its  existence  the 
impressions  of  the  fatherly  and  brotherly  relations 
as  well  as  its  self-consciousness.  Those  impres- 
sions are  inherited  from  an  innumerable  series  of 
progenitors,  and  they  are  repeated  in  the  individual 
experience  of  every  life.  If  the  primary  natural 
form  of  the  relationships  be  not  present  in  a 
father  and  brothers  by  blood,  there  is  provision 
for  substitutes  where  it  is  wanting,  as  there  is  for 
extensions  where  it  is  present.  From  the  ori- 
ginal elements  an  infinite  variety  of  personal  life 
is  developed  without  introducing  any  relation 
essentially  new.  From  fatherhood  come  all  those 
relations  of  man  to  his  fellows  which  imply  protec- 
tion, correction,  or  command  on  one  side,  and 


238  MAN'S  KNO  WLEDGE 

reverence  on  the  other,  as  the  king,  the  judge, 
the  elder ;  and  from  the  brother  come  all  that 
imply  mutual  familiarity,  helpfulness,  and  example, 
while  in  ourselves  we  find  that  personal  con- 
sciousness whereby  we  are  one  with  our  fathers 
and  brothers,  and  become  fathers  and  brothers 
in  our  turn.  These  great  root  ideas  of  the  human 
race  combined  in  an  unlimited  number  of  various 
aspects  make  up  life  and  furnish  the  spiritual 
clothing  of  the  soul,  which  is  trained  among  them. 
To  this  common  language  and  common  feeling 
testify.  What  more  common  than  to  extend  to 
those  above  us  the  ways  of  speech  and  feeling 
which  find  their  first  application  to  the  father ;  and 
to  call  mankind  brothers  when  we  regard  them  as 
on  the  same  level  with  ourselves.  And  how  deep 
lies  the  sense  of  communion,  nay,  of  identity, 
between  us  and  them.  These  are  the  forms  of 
personality  which  make  us  what  we  are.  They 
exercise  their  influence  over  us  unceasingly  and 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  life.  They 
demand  of  us  the  recognition  of  fatherly  and 
brotherly  relations  as  held  by  others  to  ourselves, 
and  the  exercise  of  the  same  relations  by  us  to 
others  when  the  occasion  comes.  The  due  use  and 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  239 

application  of  these  ideas  constitute  all  right  doing 
between  man  and  man.  There  is  no  form  of  virtue 
from  the  commonest  to  the  most  devoted  which  it 
is  possible  for  us  to  practice  towards  one  another 
that  will  not  fall  under  the  true  conception  of 
these  relations,  nor  any  form  of  offence  which  is 
not  an  infringement  of  them. 

84.  But  while  these  are  the  elements  of  human 
life,  we  have  the  bitterest  experience  how  far 
human  life  falls  short  of  exemplifying  The  failures  of 
all  that  they  might  be.  How  far  ^™ 
the  earthly  father  is  from  being  itsownforms- 
what  he  ought  to  be  to  his  children  ;  he  is 
wanting  alike  in  love  and  wisdom.  Even  in  the 
very  best  instances  he  does  not  guide  nor  pro- 
tect nor  correct  his  children  to  their  profit, 
but  to  his  pleasure ;  and  multitudes  of  cases 
occur  in  which  he  shows  himself  absolutely  neglect- 
ful of  any  such  duty.  Brotherhood  meets  a  realisa- 
tion equally  imperfect.  There  is  indeed  so  much 
both  of  it  and  of  fatherhood  as  imparts  to  the 
words  father  and  brother  a  wealth  of  delightful 
association  which  speaks  of  love,  help,  and  union. 
Yet,  though  we  call  mankind  our  brother  men,  how 
much  there  is  of  enmity  and  injury,  and  of  every- 


240  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

thing  that  is  unbrotherly  in  the  conduct  of  man  to 
man.  How  little  of  that  self-sacrifice  in  which 
alone  brotherly  duty  is  complete.  While  the 
father  is  less  than  a  true  father  to  us,  and  the 
brother  less  than  a  true  brother,  we  are  still  more 
sensible  of  the  failures  of  our  inward  self  to  be 
either  true  son  or  true  brother,  or  true  to  that  duty 
to  self  from  which  all  others  spring. 

Even  if  all  were  otherwise  in  the  moral  aspects 
of  life,  none  of  these  relations  could  ever  be  com- 
pletely realised  on  earth,  because  brotherhood  and 
fatherhood  (as  the  New  Testament  says  of  human 
priesthood)  '  could  not  continue  by  reason  of  death.' 
Death  carries  off  even  him  who  best  realises  the 
idea  of  human  life,  and  leaves  behind  those  whose 
existence  was  bound  up  with  and  completed  by 
his,  all  maimed  and  imperfect. 

And  thus  life  is  a  training  and  education  of 
the  self, — first  in  the  enjoyment  of  sonship  and 
brotherhood  and  the  sense  of  all  that  properly 
belongs  to  these  personal  relations,  and  secondly 
in  the  sense  of  the  world's  deficiency  in  both. 
Training  and  education  are  indeed  words  too  weak 
to  express  the  whole  truth  of  the  case.  For  what 
we  call  training  and  education  cannot  begin  until 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  241 


life  and  its  faculties  are  developed,  and  they  are 
an  anxious  and  deliberate  proceeding.  But  these 
relations  of  which  we  are  speaking  consist  in  the 
nature  of  things,  and  teach  their  lessons  the  more 
effectually  because  they  require  no  deliberate 
attempt  or  intention  either  in  tutor  or  learner. 
They  pass  imperceptibly  and  irresistibly  into  the 
very  constitution  of  the  soul,  and  it  is  impossible 
for  us,  whatever  beliefs  or  opinions  we  may  chance 
to  take  up,  to  lose  the  aspirations  and  the  desires 
which  have  thus  been  rooted  in  us.  Not  one  of 
those  habits  or  impulses  of  the  mind  which  drive 
men  to  seek  for  scientific  truth  is  so  deeply 
engrained  in  our  nature,  and  so  impossible  to 
check  or  resist,  as  that  which  urges  men  to  follow 
personality,  and  to  find  it  under  the  forms  of 
which  we  have  been  speaking.  If  we  are  to  judge 
of  the  importance  of  a  principle  in  human  life  by 
the  numbers  of  mankind  who  display  it  in  action, 
or  by  the  persistence  and  energy  with  which  it 
works  within  them,  we  must  confess  that  the 
longing  for  personal  intercourse  and  the  longing 
that  it  should  be  all  that  it  might  be,  is  immeasur- 
ably in  advance  of  the  longing  for  scientific  truth. 
85.  As  in  our  experience  of  facts  of  all  kinds 

R 


242  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

we  are  driven  to  seek  a  cause  underlying  the  things 
which  we  see  and  experience,  so  we  are  impelled 

The  forms  of  the    tO     lo°k     bdlind     the      ^therhood,     and 

brotherhood,    and    the  .  self-conscious- 
e  "ess,  which  are    displayed    in   human 


life,  for  a  cause  which  makes  them 
what  they  are  and  gives  them  that  place  in  man's 
soul  which  they  possess.  This  demand  of  the 
mind  combines  itself  with  the  wants  of  the  heart. 
As  every  disappointment  of  a  desire  which  has  . 
a  deep  and  important  place  in  our  hearts  leaves  a 
longing  that  influences  our  whole  life,  so  it  cannot 
be  but  that  the  constant  and  necessary  inadequacy 
of  human  personalities  to  fulfil  their  own  idea  shall 
exercise  an  abiding  influence  upon  the  ruling  desires 
of  all  mankind. 

Since  this  is  the  history  of  the  formation  of 
human  minds,  and  the  habit  which  the  consti- 
tution of  their  earthly  existence  forces  them  to 
contract,  we  can  well  understand  the  welcome 
which  the  Catholic  faith  has  received  among  them. 
For  it  represents  the  father  and  the  brother  and 
the  self  as  eternally  and  perfectly  existing.  It 
tells  men  that  as  all  nature,  and  man  the  crown 
of  nature,  have  their  origin  in  God  who  is  their 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  243 

cause,  and  reveal  Him,  so  there  is  something 
in  God  distinctly  corresponding  to  the  forms 
in  which  mankind  necessarily  exists,  and  these 
forms  therefore,  when  regarded  in  their  spiritual 
aspect,  reveal  God.  It  is  indeed  only  in  a  mystery 
that  this  divine  truth  can  be  grasped  by  the  mind. 
But  this  can  furnish  no  good  or  sufficient  reason 
for  doubt,  so  long  as  men  must  acknowledge  that 
their  own  personality  and  that  of  their  fellows  is 
a  mystery  to  them  no  less  than  that  of  God. 

Such  a  revelation  is  welcomed  by  the  reason 
of  men  as  shewing  in  the  first  cause  of  their  life 
something  which  accounts  for  the  forms  which 
life  assumes  in  them.  If  indeed  we  were  to  regard 
man  as  a  purely  physical  phenomenon,  his  per- 
sonality as  a  physical  product,  and  the  relations 
of  his  personality  to  others  and  the  feelings  conse- 
quent on  those  relations  as  all  physical  circum- 
stances, we  should  then  need  no  other  account  of 
the  matter  than  that  which  physical  evolution 
affords.  But  the  universal  reason  of  mankind 
has  not  accepted  a  physical  view  of  life.  To  it 
the  spiritual  aspects  of  human  existence  have 
seemed  as  essential  as  the  material,  and  require  as 
adequate  an  account  of  their  origin.  The  close 

R  2 


244  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

connexion  of  mental  development  with  physical 
has  been  brought  out  of  late  with  emphasis  :  and 
indeed  experience  always  taught  men  that  mind 
and  body  were  closely  connected  and  that  the 
condition  of  the  former  was  greatly  dependent  on 
that  of  the  latter.  It  was  known  that  the  forms  of 
our  life  were  found  in  their  outward  and  material 
aspects  in  the  lower  animals.  Yet  this  close 
union  with  matter  does  not  seem  to  mankind  in 
general  to  deprive  mind  and  spirit  of  their  proper 
character,  or  to  account  for  them  by  physical 
causes  as  if  they  were  phenomena  of  matter. 
The  affections  of  human  nature,  the  obedience 
and  the  self-sacrifice  which  are  drawn  out  by 
human  connexions,  have  led  men  to  believe  that 
there  is  something  in  the  source  of  our  being 
which  exemplifies  in  itself  these  qualities  and 
therefore  produces  them  in  us.  And  if  we  ask 
for  a  spiritual  and  personal  cause  of  our  spiritual 
and  personal  existence  it  must  needs  be  welcome 
to  reason  that  we  should  recognise  in  it  the 
same  forms  which  are  essential  to  personality  in 
ourselves. 

But   it   is   not   by  reasoning  that  the  mass  of 
mankind  are  governed.     It  is  not  from  reasoning 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  245 

that  even  the  few  who  can  reason  derive  their 
strongest  impulses,  or  those  which  abide  with 
them  most  persistently.  But  wherever  there  is  a 
heart  which  has  experienced  the  power  of  the  name 
father,  and  the  appeal  which  it  makes  to  our  faith 
and  our  affections ;  wherever  a  want  can  be  felt 
which  an  earthly  father  cannot  supply,  or  a  hope 
entertained  which  an  earthly  father  must  disap- 
point :  there  is  to  be  found  the  capacity  of 
believing  in  a  Father  in  heaven  and  the  feeling 
how  sorely  He  is  needed.  Whenever  any  one 
wants  the  aid  of  a  brother,  or  through  feeling 
how  much  his  brethren  can  do  for  him  is  led  to 
feel  how  much  they  cannot  do  :  there  is  room  for 
faith  in  the  eternal  Brother  whose  self-sacrifice  is 
perfect  and  whose  help  is  all-sufficient.  When- 
ever a  man  feels  the  deficiency  of  will  and  of 
vigour  in  his  own  secret  self,  and  longs  for 
some  addition  of  strength  from  those  mysterious 
regions  in  which  the  wonderful  powers  which  he 
already  possesses  have  their  rise :  there  is  the 
need  for  the  Holy  Ghost  and  a  reason  for  be- 
lieving in  Him.  Now  there  is  no  human  being 
so  deeply  sunk  in  ignorance  or  apathy  as  not  to 
have  a  dim  feeling  of  such  wants  in  him,  nor  any 


246  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 

so    cultured  and  so  strong  as  to  be  independent 
of  these  desires  and  hopes. 

86.  The  Catholic  faith  was  proclaimed  to  men 
thus   prepared    by   nature.      But   no   part  of  the 

In  this  character    Pr°°f    °f    itS    tfUth     WSS    rCSted    °n    aOV 

tSJS!!?  want  of  theirs-  Tt  told  of  an  eternal 

and  accepted.  Father  expressly  revealed  under  that 
familiar  name,  the  true  Author  of  our  being, 
in  comparison  to  whom  the  earthly  medium  by 
which  our  life  was  given  hardly  deserves  the 
title  :  our  Protector,  our  Teacher,  our  Ruler,  our 
Maintainer,  performing  in  perfection  all  those 
duties  of  fatherhood  of  which  men  are  the  im- 
perfect agents.  He  is  never  absent,  and  He  is 
never  to  die.  He  encompasses  our  whole  life,  and 
presents  within  the  very  depths  of  our  nature  that 
call  for  dependence,  trust,  and  obedience  which 
comes  to  us  not  unreally,  but  fitfully  and  imper- 
fectly, from  our  fathers  in  the  flesh.  It  reveals  a 
Son  of  God  in  the  true  nature  of  His  Father  as 
earthly  sons  are  of  theirs,  able  therefore  to 
bring  His  brethren  to  the  very  bosom  of  their 
common  Father.  And  this  Son  of  God  is  Son 
of  Man,  and  not  ashamed  to  call  men  brethren. 
He  does  for  them  the  true  duties  of  brotherhood 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  247 

as  men  never  do  them.  His  example  is  perfect, 
whether  oil  the  side  that  turns  towards  the 
common  Father  or  on  that  which  regards  men 
themselves.  He  sacrificed  Himself  for  His  brethren 
that  He  might  bring  them  to  their  Father,  and 
that  He  might  fill  them  with  that  true  brother- 
hood which  will  lead  them  to  sacrifice  themselves 
for  Him  and  for  His  brother  men.  And  it  reveals 
a  Spirit  who  can  reach  our  spirit,  that  is  our 
inmost  self,  and  draw  it  to  the  Father  and  to  the 
Son.  "  Because  ye  are  sons  God  hath  sent  forth 
the  Spirit  of  his  Son  into  your  hearts  whereby 
ye  cry,  Abba  Father.  The  Spirit  itself  beareth 
witness  with  our  spirit,  that  we  are  the  children  of 
God  :  and  if  children,  then  heirs  ;  heirs  of  God  and 
joint-heirs  with  Christ."  And  again,  "  For  this 
cause  I  bow  my  knees  unto  the  Father,  from  whom 
every  fatherhood  in  heaven  and  earth  is  named, 
that  He  would  grant  you  according  to  the  riches 
of  His  glory,  that  ye  may  be  strengthened  with 
power  through  His  Spirit  in  the  inward  man  : 
that  Christ  may  dwell  in  your  hearts  through 
faith,  to  the  end  that  ye  being  rooted  and  grounded 
in  love  may  be  strong  to  apprehend  with  all  the 
saints  what  is  the  breadth,  and  length,  and  height, 


248  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE 


and  depth,  and  to  know  the  love  of  Christ  which 
passeth  knowledge  that  ye  may  be  filled  unto 
all  the  fulness  of  God." 

Thus  the  Catholic  faith  covers  the  whole  per- 
sonal life  of  man,  and  extends  the  range  of  his 
personal  communion,  always  upon  the  same  great 
lines  which  life  establishes  for  him  from  the  first. 
If  additional  examples  were  wanting  of  the  analogy, 
or  rather  the  unity,  thus  established  between  life 
and  religion  we  might  find  it  in  this  :  that  many 
of  the  derivative  applications  which  we  find  in 
earthly  experience  to  rise  out  of  the  great  con- 
stituent elements  of  personal  life  are  found  also 
in  religion.  The  Father  is  the  judge,  the  ruler, 
the  teacher  :  the  Brother  is  the  leader,  the  captain, 
the  king.  And  as  in  the  earthly  relationships, 
the  idea  of  fatherhood  and  brotherhood,  distinct 
though  they  be,  are  yet  not  so  separate  but  that 
the  functions  of  the  one  often  pass  to  the  other  ; 
so  also  it  is  in  the  faith :  command  is  not  so 
purely  the  office  of  the  father,  nor  obedience  and 
reverence  so  exclusively  his  due,  but  that  both 
may  pass  to  the  brother.  Nor  is  self-sacrifice  and 
fellow-feeling  so  entirely  the  property  of  a  brother 
but  that  a  father  may  have  full  share  in  them. 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  249 

And  so  we  find  in  the  Bible  the  names  and  titles 
of  the  Father  and  the  Son  interchanged,  and  no 
function  is  ascribed  to  the  one  Divine  Person  in 
which  the  other  has  no  share. 

The  marriage  union  which  doubles  personal  life 
in  this  world,  setting  beside  the  earthly  person  a 
subject  personality  in  which  it  is  reflected  and 
repeated,  finds  its  counterpart  in  the  divine  sphere. 
For  there  are  few  images  more  frequently  used  in 
the  New  Testament  than  that  by  which  the 
Church,  which  represents  Christ  on  earth  and  is 
the  channel  of  His  work  and  of  His  authority,  is 
called  His  bride. 

The  mysterious  and  incomprehensible  com- 
munion between  soul  and  soul  in  man  takes  place 
by  outward  and  visible  means,  and  through  the 
same  outward  world  the  self  meets  its  fellow  self; 
though  how  it  does  so  must  ever  remain  a  mystery. 
And  so  it  is  that  the  sacramental  system  of 
Christianity  makes  earthly  and  visible  things  the 
means  whereby  the  personality  of  man  is  brought 
into  communion  with  that  of  God.  The  more  we 
reflect  upon  the  Christian  theology  the  more  we 
feel  how  consonant  it  is  with  life,  and  that  there  is 
nothing  of  what  is  best  and  highest  in  personal 


250  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

communion  and  personal  consciousness  which  does 
not  find  its  completion  and  the  satisfaction  of 
the  desires  it  excites  in  this  holy  faith.  Human 
affections,  and  the  habits  into  which  life  irresistibly 
moulds  us,  are  futile  and  objectless  in  their  best 
parts,  unless  they  are  meant  to  train  us  for  this 
eternal  communion.  We  learn  in  this  world  to 
reverence,  trust,  and  love,  only  to  see  the  objects 
of  these  feelings  prove  unworthy  or  disappear. 
And  after  the  long  education  through  pleasure 
and  through  pain,  which  life  imparts  to  us,  just 
when  our  minds  seem  capable  of  some  higher  and 
better  use  than  any  which  has  hitherto  been 
afforded  them,  we  ourselves  die.  A  miserable 
history  of  waste  and  disappointment  unless  we  can 
hope  for  a  renewal  of  life  amidst  better  and  more 
satisfying  conditions,  and  find  an  object  for  the 
powers  of  communion  of  which  our  personal  soul 
is  capable  that  shall  be  more  complete  and  lasting 
than  those  with  which  our  senses  have  to  do. 

87.  The  wonderful  fitness  of  the  Christian  creed 
to  satisfy  a^  tne  wants  to  which  our 
Personal  life  trains  us  is  a  witness 

in  revealed  facts.    ^      ^     ^^      and     Qf     the     mQ^     pQ^ 

suasive   nature ;    a    witness    of  truth    such   as  we 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  251 

possess  for  the  realities  that  meet  us  in  life  and  for 
their  adaptation  to  our  needs.  Of  these  it  may 
be  said  that  they  are  their  own  evidence.  They 
do  not  require  to  be  argued  out.  And  we  are 
conscious  that  if  we  attempted  to  argue  upon  them 
we  should  be  entering  upon  difficult  and  uncertain 
questions.  'Our  minds  are  not  able  to  reproduce 
the  feelings  on  the  strength  of  which  the  evidence 
depends.  And  we  find  by  experience  that  our 
best  course  is  to  train  and  restrain  our  feelings  as 
well  as  we  can,  and  when  this  has  been  done,  to 
listen  to  their  dictates  without  over-much  ques- 
tioning. It  is  on  this  principle  that  we  choose 
our  friends  and  the  objects  of  our  pursuits  in  life. 
Sometimes  we  make  mistakes  ;  but  we  do  so  not 
because  we  attend  to  our  feelings,  but  because  we 
leave  our  feelings  untrained.  Greater  mistakes 
are  made  in  daily  life  through  not  listening  to  the 
feelings  than  through  perversions  of  them.  And  on 
the  same  principle  it  seems  we  should  choose  our 
religion.  No  higher  proof  of  the  divine  origin  of  a 
religion  can  be  conceived  than  an  adaptation  to 
satisfy  in  the  greatest  degree  all  the  truest  wants 
of  human  nature  ;  to  lay  hold  of  it  by  that  personal 
quality  in  which  all  affections  and  powers  have 


252  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

their  centre  and  so  command  the  whole  man.  And 
if  we  feel  unwilling  to  trust  our  own  consciousness 
in  the  matter,  we  find  the  proper  supplement  to 
our  experience  and  the  supply  of  its  deficiencies  in 
the  wide  acceptance  and  proved  power  of  this 
religion  among  immense  numbers  and  varieties 
of  the  highest  and  best  persons  and  races  of  men. 
We  cannot  be  unsafe  if  we  submit  ourselves  to 
its  happy  dominion. 

But  as  the  intellect  is  fertile  in  doubts,  and 
sometimes  demands  to  be  listened  to,  even  when 
it  is  opposing  what  our  healthiest  impulses  require, 
it  is  possible  that  an  argument  against  the  divine 
origin  of  the  Catholic  faith  might  be  founded  upon 
that  very  fitness  to  human  life  on  which  we  have 
been  treating.  It  may  be  urged  that  the  existence 
of  the  want  has  originated  the  imagination  of  its 
supply,  and  that  just  because  men  have  wanted 
so  much  better  fathers  and  brothers  and  selves 
than  they  were  possessed  of,  they  have  invented 
a  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost  above  this  imper- 
fect world.  If  we  were  to  listen  to  doubts  of  this 
nature  we  never  should  believe  anything  beyond 
what  we  see  ;  for  that  which  is  ill-fitted  to  our 
wants  and  feelings  would  be  rejected  because  it 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  253 

is  so :  and  that  which  is  well-fitted  to  them  would 
be  rejected  as  being  too  good  to  be  true,  and 
bearing  the  marks  of  invention  in  its  very  per- 
fection. However,  the  history  of  the  Christian 
creed  dissipates  the  doubt.  It  was  not  devised 
by  ingenious  persons,  nor  did  it  come  upon  the 
world  as  a  formal  system.  It  grew  stage  by  stage 
on  the  basis  of  facts  experienced  in  the  history 
of  a  nation  and  of  individuals.  And  those  who 
deduced  the  great  system  from  these  data  had  no 
intention  in  their  minds  except  that  of  being  true 
to  the  revelation  which  they  had  received.  The 
wondrous  comprehensiveness  of  the  creed  which 
resulted  from  their  labours  is  due  not  to  them  but 
to  the  divine  author  of  the  revealed  facts  on  which 
it  was  founded.  Just  so  the  symmetry  and  com- 
pleteness of  a  scientific  theory  may  lead  one  at  first 
sight  to  suspect  that  it  is  ingeniously  framed  to 
meet  the  intellectual  tendencies  of  the  lovers  of 
system.  But  should  it  prove  to  be  founded  upon 
the  most  rigorous  observation  of  facts,  we  no 
longer  see  in  its  symmetry  any  sign  of  human 
device,  but  the  reflection  of  a  law  which  proceeds 
from  the  mind  of  the  Author  of  nature.  And  the 
same  is  true  of  the  Christian  creed.  The 


254  MAWS  KNOWLEDGE 

mysterious  personality  of  God  is  deduced  from 
experience,  just  as  that  of  man  :  and  after  all  is 
known  that  can  be  known  of  It,  It  remains  like 
the  personality  of  man,  a  mystery  still.  But  it 
is  a  mystery  which  is  sufficiently  known  to  explain 
all  life  and  satisfy  every  need  of  the  soul  of  man. 
We  are  not  capable  of  proving  beyond  dispute 
any  of  the  more  comprehensive  truths  of  human 
life.  Neither  our  own  existence  nor  the  existence 
of  other  men,  nor  the  existence  of  nature,  are 
so  demonstrated  that  an  unlimited  and  un- 
restrained willingness  to  doubt  them  can  be 
crushed  by  the  weight  of  their  evidence.  But 
the  question  comes  at  last  to  this  :  Does  the 
faith  work  ?  Does  it  bring  belief  and  practice 
into  harmony  ?  Does  it  furnish  a  spiritual  equip- 
ment fit  for  life  ?  Does  it  reconcile  experiences 
that  without  it  are  contradictory  ?  And  if  it  does 
this  we  accept  it.  We  listen  with  great  indif- 
ference to  those  who  would  deprive  us  of  it, 
putting  nothing  in  its  place.  Now  we  claim  all 
this  for  the  Catholic  faith.  It  is  Catholic  in  this 
highest  sense  that  every  man  can  find  in  it  room 
to  exercise  in  a  supreme  degree  those  various 
powers  of  body,  mind,  and  soul,  with  which  God 


OF  MAN  AND  OF  GOD.  255 

endows  him,  and  in  which  experience  educates 
him.  He  is  provided  with  adequate  objects  for 
that  conscious  life  and  that  sense  of  personality 
which  is  otherwise,  with  all  its  splendour,  an 
anomaly  in  nature  and  a  misery  to  himself. 

No  man  need  imagine  that  he  is  sacrificing  truth 
because  he  allows  conscience  and  feeling  as  well  as 
logic  room  to  work  in  his  belief.  We  opened  our  sub- 
ject by  laying  down  that  logic  is  not  the  only  organ 
for  discovering  reality,  and  that  feeling  as  well  as 
intellect  is  a  guide  to  the  truth  which  surrounds  us. 
It  has  been  further  shewn  that  our  deepest  feelings 
are  those  which  are  the  utterance  of  our  personality 
claiming  free  exercise  for  its  own  energies  and 
seeking  communion  with  personalities  like  itself. 
No  systems  can  be  furnishing  to  man  the  best  truths 
he  is  capable  of  realising  if  they  tend  to  obscure 
personality  or  to  deprive  him  of  the  faith  which 
can  best  develop  it.  And  of  faiths,  the  best  form 
will  be  that  which,  coming  with  good  warrant 
from  historic  fact,  enlists  our  various  powers 
of  intellect,  conscience  and  taste,  of  art  and 
science  and  speculation,  in  the  freest  and  fullest 
exercise  under  the  supreme  command  of  the 
personal  life  and  will.  It  will  teach  us  the 


256  MAN'S  KNOWLEDGE,  ETC. 

worth  of  our  personality  by  what  it  shews  us  of 
our  past  origin  and  our  future  prospects.  And  it 
will  uplift  our  personality  by  the  aid  which  can 
only  come  through  a  real  and  living  union  with 
the  Perfect  Life  of  Him  who  is  human  and 
divine,  and  in  Him  with  all  that  is  best  in  men 
past  and  present ;  above  all,  with  the  eternal 
being  of  God. 


r 


LONDON  I  RICHARD  CLAY  £  SONS,  PRINTERS. 


VB  22593 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  UBRARY 


